Todd & Téa — Intervals
by Tessaray
Summary: Todd and Téa spend an ill-fated night at the Bayberry Inn and try to deal with the repercussions. Vintage TnT, Christmas, 1997. Angsty, mature exploration of Todd's psyche and sexuality.
1. Chapter 1

**INTERVALS**

**by ****_Tessaray_**

1\. A space between two objects.  
2\. The amount of time between two specified events.

* * *

**CHAPTER ONE**

_It's Christmas at the Bayberry Inn, and The Mannings are there to enjoy their first weekend getaway as a couple. The problem is, only one of them actually wants to be there._

_Their marriage-of-convenience still unconsummated_, _they've shared a moment of closeness that could have led to more, but Todd has shut down again and is growing increasingly hostile as Téa presses him for answers._

_Finally, Téa breaks the pattern of arguing in circles and offers him a deal: she'll stop bugging him about their 'relationship' and his 'feelings' for one month if he'll allow her to touch him in any way she wants for five minutes._

_We join them in the midst of negotiations..._

* * *

Todd Manning is pacing, running his hands through his long brown hair. 'This is a crap idea, Delgado. You don't know what you're asking.'

Téa keeps her distance, uses her best lawyerly tone. 'Let's look at this rationally, Todd: we're two people who share a certain...affection—'

He winces.

'No? Bond. Can I say bond?'

He glares at her. 'How about _two people who are fellow signatories to a legally-binding contract?_'

'How about _a married couple_,' she says with irritation.

He huffs, begins to turn away.

'Okay, okay,' she says. 'We'll leave labels out of it. How about this: it's just two young, healthy bodies which could, potentially, enjoy one another. Nothing more than that.'

'It's always more than that,' he grumbles.

'It doesn't have to be. I can leave emotion out of it,' she tilts her chin down, challenging him. 'Can you?'

'The only emotions I feel around you, Delgado, are frustration and...more frustration.'

She smiles slyly. 'Well, let's see what we can do about that.'

'Not that kind of frustration. Get your mind out of the gutter.'

'Oh, come on, Todd,' she laughs. 'Five minutes of actual human contact. Maybe even some pleasure. And think of what you'll be gaining.'

'Yeah, you shutting up about all this relationship stuff, you not changing the rules every time I turn around.' He ponders, paces like a lion in a cage. 'Five minutes,' he mutters.

'I promise. I'll put it in writing, if you—'

'Where?'

'On the bed.'

'Awww...'

'Nonnegotiable.'

He groans, fists his hands in his hair. 'I hate this.'

'You can say no.'

He glares at her, works his jaw.

'No tricks.'

'No tricks. The terms are clear: I will touch you however I want for five minutes, no more, no less. This has a timer,' she says, removing her wristwatch and holding it up between them. 'I don't expect you to participate; you can just lay there. And if you want to continue, we'll set it for another five minutes, and so on.'

'Don't hold your breath, Delgado, 'cuz that's not gonna happen.'

'If you say so.'

'And don't stall and drag things out.'

'You're the boss.'

'Very funny. And no kissing.'

'Agreed.'

He snatches the watch from her hand.

'I'll set the timer. You'll cheat.'

* * *

**INTERVAL 1**

She gestures to the bed and he grumps as he lays himself down, crosses his arms over his chest and his legs at the ankles. She climbs up to kneel beside him. He's as rigid as a corpse.

'Can you at least try to relax?'

'Oh, do have to take direction? Is that part of this, too?'

'Never mind.'

She clicks the button to start the timer, lays the watch on the nightstand.

'You mean that wasn't going already? That was, like, ten seconds. You have to subtract ten sec—hey!'

He seizes her wrists as she goes for his belt.

'What the hell, Delgado,' he barks.

'You agreed—however I want.'

'I was thinking maybe a massage!'

'This is a good deal for you, Todd, but you have to be willing to stretch your boundaries just this once.'

He nearly crushes her wrists, leans up to look her right in the eye. 'Don't _fuck_ with me. In any sense of the word.'

'I wouldn't dream of it.'

He gives her an icy glare, releases her and lowers himself back to the mattress.

'All right,' he says, as though psyching himself up for death by firing squad. 'All right. A deal's a deal. Anything to get you to shut up. Just keep it...clinical.'

He throws an arm over his eyes and makes a show of bracing himself. Really, though, there's no way he's going to let himself react to her. This should be easy, and then a month of peace and quiet.

'How much time is left?'

He feels the mattress shift, hears a click as she lays the watch back on the nightstand.

'Five minutes,' she says.

'Like hell!'

'We spent all that time clarifying our terms, which wasn't technically—'

'Goddammit,' he mutters, decides not to waste any more energy arguing with a woman who argues professionally. 'Whatever. Just get on with it.'

—

She isn't erotic about getting his jeans open or wrestling them and his boxer-briefs over his uncooperative hips and down his thighs. She barely registers the intimacy of this moment—she'll have plenty of time for reflection later, knows her subconscious is recording it all in exquisite detail. But right now, she only has a few minutes and wants to make them count.

She'd half expected his penis to be covered with spikes like some Medieval torture device, the way he's been trying to protect her from it, but it's smooth and perfect, reclining in a nest of dark golden curls. She hears his sharp intake of breath as she begins stroking it lightly with her fingertips. It twitches once, twice, then lays still. While she hadn't counted on an ovation, she hoped he might respond in spite of himself.

But there's nothing Téa loves more than a challenge.

She bends her mouth to him, licks gently along his soft, slack skin, feels him begin to swell and lengthen beneath her tongue.

He inhales through gritted teeth.

She doesn't care that he's resisting—she's used to him withholding himself from her in every possible way. But now she's soaking wet, was even when they were discussing their terms, and she has him right where she wants him. Todd the Untouchable, the enigma, with haunted, turbulent eyes and a dark sensuality made even more enticing by his constant attempts to repress it. If this is the only way to get closer to him, so be it.

—

He wants this over with, won't look at her as she fools around with him, keeps one arm locked over his eyes, the other ramrod straight at his side. In his head he's on his high school's gridiron, running defensive drills.

Suddenly, his cock is engulfed in wet heat, and it's been so long that he has to choke back a cry, force his body not to shake apart. Football practice can't possibly compete with this. She sucks him quickly to his full length, backs off when he's too much for her to take, swirls her tongue around his tip and down again. But he's determined to maintain distance and pretends he's in the shower, encased in his own slick, soapy hand. He focuses on the faint tick of her watch on the nightstand, turns the sound into water droplets hitting an imaginary shower door. It must be nearly five minutes by now. When it beeps, this is going to be so over.

—

Téa is falling in love with Todd's cock. It is uncomplicated, responsive, warm—all the things he isn't. And as she loves it, slowly, sensually with her mouth and hands, it seems to love her back. Unlike its owner who is as detached and icy as ever, and showing no signs of thawing out.

In frustration, Téa gathers his scrotum in her soft, warm hand and tugs. A hiss and a small movement draw her eye upward and when she sees him finally watching her from under his protective arm, her vulva clenches. She licks deliberately up to his tip, then engulfs him slowly, sucking and swirling her tongue, never breaking eye contact.

His lips part and he gasps.

The timer beeps.

####

Téa sits upright, rocks back on her heels and reaches to silence the noise.

'Shall we stop,' she says, not at all sure of the answer.

He doesn't move, seems not to hear her, but his cock twitches in mid-air. His eyes are once again hidden by his arm.

'I said no tricks, Delgado,' he snarls.

'I did nothing you didn't agree to.'

He's quiet for a time, his breathing ragged. 'You were stalling.'

'Stalling would imply a goal, Todd. Do we have a goal?'

'Pleasure. You said pleasure.'

She glances pointedly at his straining erection. He seems to know where she's looking.

'Shut up, Delgado.'

'Perhaps we should renegotiate our—'

'Just set the damn timer.'

* * *

**INTERVAL 2**

Okay, he can't keep himself from responding, so now he's determined to come quickly and put an end to this. But she's focused on pushing his sweater up instead of getting down to business.

'Hey, what about—'

'Shh. Five minutes, anything I want.'

She whispers her fingers through the spray of hair on his chest, scratches lightly over his nipples, and though he tries mightily to suppress it, he's primed now and shivers at every touch. He braces for her self-satisfied comments and is grateful when all she does is brush her lips across the overheated skin of his stomach.

Moving down, she licks slowly up his shaft again and his hips rock homeward of their own accord, pressing his swollen tip gently between her lips. She moans and the vibration sends shockwaves to his balls. It's too much. He feels a familiar, unwelcome heat in his blood and he wants to stop, squeezes his arm more fervently over his eyes, fists his other hand in the bedspread. He thought he wanted to come, but the truth is, he wants to _have come_, past tense, and now be safely away. He's not ready to risk this with her.

He should stop. Could stop, right now.

Can't stop. Not now. And for the first time in many months, he feels himself separate, float above and watch.

—

Téa feels Todd withdraw from her again, not physically—he is still straining between her lips—but psychically. He would deny it to hell and back, but for several glorious moments he had almost surrendered to her, she had responded, and now he's gone. Hiding. And he's so achingly vulnerable, so _fragile_, that she can't help but regret that she ever started this thing.

But for the first time since their marriage she has the power, and it's intoxicating. She ghosts her fingers up his inner thighs and he shivers, nearly convulses under her hands, and if he were any other man, she would tease, tickle, and there would be laughter. But with Todd, every gasp is like an involuntary confession, every touch an invasion of his privacy. She tries to soothe him, to reassure him with gentle strokes and kisses that this is about bodies and pleasure and nothing else. But it isn't, and never will be with him, and that's what he's been trying to tell her all along.

She can stop right here, politely offer him a steaming mug of Christmas glögg, then they can go ridicule carolers and pretend this never happened. But she decides to give him the choice. She sits back.

'Do you want to...finish?'

He is motionless, watching her from under his arm with equal parts desire and hatred. It's a look that, she's dismayed to find, ignites a bonfire between her legs.

'Take off your sweater,' he says, his voice thick.

The timer beeps.

####

She reaches over to shut it off, but leaves one hand resting lightly on his thigh.

'So...you want to continue,' she says, failing to keep the note of triumph from her voice.

His eyes sweep up her body with heat that prickles her skin.

'You gonna get rid of that?'

She hesitates only a moment before reaching for the hem of her sweater, drawing it up and over her head. Her bra is red, lacy, her nipples hard.

'Going to a party?' he says breathlessly.

'Like it?'

'Set the timer.'

* * *

**INTERVAL 3**

He's responding openly now, almost desperately, and though every tortured moan is like the answer to a riddle, she has the sense that he's elsewhere, watching, waiting. She wonders why he hasn't stopped this, why he's allowing it all, and she longs to bring him back and show him that he's safe. Maybe if she's gentle enough, loving enough...

_I can leave emotion out of it..._

_Just two young, healthy bodies..._

She reminds herself of her own words as his warm scent surrounds her and she sinks deeper into him, into his enormous need, into his pleasure and pain and all the new questions they pose. She's at home in this place and doesn't want to go back now. But they made a deal.

Selfishly, she pauses when he's close—to prolong, to tease—loving his choked, agonized sounds, loving his bitten, swollen lips, his long hair that spreads wild on the pillow with each helpless toss of his head, his strong hands that grip the headboard in a gesture very like submission.

Curled beside him, she resumes the steady, insistent strokes of her mouth and hands, and when his hips rock in a gentle counter-rhythm, he's so erotic, so achingly beautiful to her senses that the low throb between her legs grows vivid. She needs to touch herself but is sure he'll mock her, so she squeezes her thighs together, works her internal muscles until she's hot, trembling, on the brink of orgasm.

—

Something has changed; her strokes on him have intensified, her manner is urgent, and it's the need to touch her that pulls him away from his watchful, detached place and back into the fevered, vibrating pleasure of his body. He checks himself first for rage, for malice, for anything that would signal that she isn't safe, before allowing himself to release the headboard and reach down, weave one hand into her hair, cup her ass with the other and pull her onto her knees. His fingers search for and find wet heat through the fabric between her legs, and he presses.

Suddenly she shudders and rears up, releasing his cock into the cool air, and grabs his hip for support. He flinches in horror, convinced he's hurt her, ready to retreat again, until she spreads her legs wide and grinds back against his hand, her mouth open in a silent cry.

Relieved, gratified, he presses, rubs, drinks in every moment of the pleasure he's giving her, and when she wails, her body shattering, he feels his balls tighten with an impending explosion.

'Christ, Delgado,' he gasps, tearing his hand from her hair to grab himself, but she's there first, pumping him wildly.

The timer beeps.

'Fuck that, fuck that,' he cries, and his body arches up as he bursts in her hand with deep, blistering pleasure, feels the hot spurts of semen splash his chest, hears her broken voice gasp, '_God yes, Todd, God yes._'

The beeping continues as they come down, both stunned and quaking with private aftershocks. Panting, she drops her forehead onto his hip and he allows his fingers to weave into her hair again even as the familiar aches and rages return to darken his mind. But now there's something else too, vague and raw.

'I did what you wanted, Delgado,' he says, his voice ragged. 'Now it's your turn.'

She doesn't respond, so he makes a fist and pulls her hair tighter, and tighter still until he feels her nod.


	2. Chapter 2

**CHAPTER TWO**

For the next two weeks, Téa is as good as her word. She is Todd's wife in name only, treating him as little more than a business partner. She doesn't ask for affection, conversation or connection of any kind, just as they'd agreed. She asks for nothing at all. In fact, she's barely there.

And he's been...haunted. Confused. Has taken to opening her closet door when she's not there just to inhale the perfume that lingers on her clothes, slamming the door shut again with a churning rage in his gut that he can't understand. And missing her eyes.

So he shows up at her bedroom door one night with the kitchen egg timer.

He knocks once. She never locks her door so he lets himself in. She's sitting up in her bed wearing that wine-red nightgown that makes her look at once sophisticated, seductive and completely out of his league. The lamp on her nightstand bathes her in a warm circle of light; it's a theatrical effect, appropriate for his purposes. A book is open on her lap and she's staring at him.

'I want to watch you touch yourself,' he says. It sounds good to his ears: confident, matter-of-fact, not at all shockingly inappropriate. Just as he's practiced it.

Her eyes widen and her jaw drops. He braces himself; it's too drastic. She'll tell him to fuck off; she'll pack her things and move out of his penthouse, out of his life. But he would never have considered this if he hadn't caught her watching him yesterday in the kitchen, with eyes so hot and feral that he'd grown instantly hard and, despite everything, would have fucked her on the counter if she hadn't snapped on her lawyer face, told him they were out of bacon and strode away, her heels clacking like gunfire.

He'd managed to make it to the bathroom before tearing open his pants and bringing himself off simply with the memory of her voice and _that look_ burning holes in his brain.

_God yes, Todd, God yes_.

But now she's bristling and her eyes narrow as he watches her turn his announcement over in her mind, analyze every word and nuance, analyze him. He waits, and when he sees that the answer will be a firm _get the hell out_, he raises his hand.

'Five minutes,' he says. Her eyes land on the white plastic egg timer and her features shift into an expression that can only be described as smoldering.

He turns and locks the door.

She blushes furiously. 'But, Todd! I can't do _that_—'

He tries to seem casual as he settles into the chair near the foot of her bed.

'Stretch your boundaries, Delgado,' he says, echoing her own words from that night, words she'd used to manipulate him. 'Just this once.'

Her lips move with a dozen unvoiced objections, but all he can do is remember how soft they felt on his aching body.

'What is this about, Todd,' she says, with mixed suspicion and amusement. 'I thought things were finally the way you wanted them; no expectations, no sentiment, just a business arrangement. And poor you, what you had to sacrifice to make that happen...'

'Shut up, Delgado,' he says, surprised by the anger that flares in his gut.

She seems to take it as banter, smiles, closes the book and lays it on her nightstand.

'So, five minutes, hmm?'

He swallows and nods.

'Of what, exactly?'

He feels suddenly shy. He hadn't actually expected to get this far. 'I told you.'

'You want to watch me touch myself.'

He nods.

'Anywhere in particular?'

'Come on, Delgado.'

'Well, you were pretty vague.'

'Fine. I hate the word, but you lawyers just gotta have your Latin, so...I want to watch you…,' he shifts in the chair. 'You know.'

Téa laughs. 'Masturbate?'

Todd shudders dramatically.

'God, you can be so cute.'

'I'm not cute, Delgado. I'm never cute.'

'Duly noted. So what do I get in return for this…performance?'

'You mean besides a screaming...?' He raises his eyebrows and looks pointedly at her lap.

She just as pointedly pulls the sheet tight around her chest. 'Not likely in only five minutes.'

'Okay,' he says, ready with an offer he's sure will thrill her. 'How about...I take you out to dinner. A genuine date. Anywhere you want, all the trimmings. I'll even use cutlery.'

'Tempting, but...,' she fixes him to the spot with a look that would melt ice caps. 'How about another five minutes? Lady's choice. Whatever and whenever I say.'

He falters. He had designed this encounter specifically to avoid physical contact between them. He's still recovering from the last time, still shell-shocked, compelled by something strange and dark to stand outside this very door at night, hungry for her, but not trusting himself enough to give in. He can't bear any more. But he also can't bear nothing at all.

'No, Delgado. Pick something else.'

She shakes her head slowly, a small smile teasing her lips. 'Isn't this worth a measly five minutes to you, Todd, five minutes I might never even claim?'

'Oh, you'll claim them, all right.' He launches himself from the chair and begins to pace. 'Just what do you have in mind?'

'Nothing yet. I'll have to think about it.'

'Well, I won't make a deal without all the facts. That's bad business.'

'I can tell you this; it won't hurt.'

'That's what you think,' he mutters. She cocks her head with an expression he can't quite read.

'It's your call, Todd,' she says, drawing her knees up to her chest. 'To recap: I'll let you watch me masturbate—,' she breaks off, smiling at his exaggerated cringe, '—for five minutes, in return for—'

And there it is again; her broken, gasping voice filling his head—_God yes, Todd, God yes—_and he has to lay a hand on the dresser to steady himself. If there's even a chance of hearing that again, he'll take it.

'All right, Delgado. Fine. Whatever you say.'

'Okay…,' she says, brow furrowing at his quick surrender. 'But one condition: we start the timer now.'

'But you're...clothed.'

'I need to get in the mood.'

'Get in the mood on your own time!'

She tilts her chin down and looks up at him through her lashes in that demure way that makes his palms sweaty. 'You know what will get me in the mood very, very quickly?' Her voice is sultry and goes right to his groin.

She's got him and clearly knows it.

'Whatever.' He shrugs like he's not dying to hear her next words.

'If you tell me _exactly_ what you want me to do.'

'Right. Like you'll _obey_ me.'

'Cross my heart,' she purrs.

He feels dizzy.

'Set the timer, Todd.'

* * *

**INTERVAL 1**

Todd self-consciously repositions the chair at the foot of the bed, testing out a few angles before finding the one that provides the best view. Téa's lips are red and moist as she watches him, her nipples hard beneath the silk of her nightgown, the creamy satin sheet clinging to her thighs. He used to sleep on those sheets, picked them out himself, and the intimacy of that fact makes perspiration rise on his skin. He's not at all convinced he'll get through this...intact. He seats himself, sets the timer and puts it on the floor at his feet.

'Okay. Here's your first test, Delgado,' he says. 'Lose the sheet.'

She smiles at the challenge and stretches out her legs toward him, keeping them slightly bent at the knee, thighs firmly together. She slowly draws the sheet aside like she's unveiling a work of art, and he decides that indeed, she is; her feet are delicate, her calves shapely and smooth against the shimmering fabric, and the hem of her nightgown drapes her knees in such a way that he has a glimpse of the velvety darkness beyond.

'Pull up your gown,' he orders, and clears his throat. The prospect of her _actually_ doing as he says is intensely arousing to him, and his voice is rougher than he intends.

She doesn't seem to mind. She bites her lip and slides the hem up past her knees even more slowly, stopping at mid-thigh, teasing him.

'Higher.'

She hesitates. 'Todd, maybe—'

'See,' he says, flopping back in the chair. 'I knew you were lying, Delgado.'

She narrows her eyes at him, then yanks the hem up to her hips to reveal matching wine-red panties.

'Happy now?'

'Not yet, but it's a start,' he says. 'And you don't have to sound so pissed off,' he says, leaning forward again. 'This _obedience_ thing was your idea.'

She sucks in an angry breath and Todd braces himself for an evening-ending tirade. But then she seems to remember why he's there and softens. 'Right. You're right,' she says, pinching the bridge of her nose. 'Force of habit.'

'I didn't catch that first part, Delgado.'

Her lips twitch into a smile. 'I said, _you're right_.'

Todd takes a moment to savor this rare victory, and to regard her. With her perfect hair and her slender body half-draped in silk, she manages to look both elegant and wanton like something from a pre-code Hollywood movie. Perfect. Always perfect.

He recognizes a sudden, confusing impulse to ruin her. It's dark and real and violent. He pushes it away, but it doesn't go far.

'That's a nice get-up,' he says, openly running his eyes over her. 'But it would look even better on the floor.'

Téa glances down at herself, then up at him with an expression close to panic.

'No, not yet,' he says, languidly, settling back. 'For now, run your hands down your thighs.'

She considers for a moment, then follows his instructions to the letter with a challenging gleam in her eye. Beginning at her hips, she slides her palms quickly down the curve of her thighs, drawing her knees up protectively as she goes.

He sighs heavily… not what he had in mind, but at least she didn't argue. For all her talk about getting in the mood, she sure isn't showing any signs of it.

'Tell me how your skin feels.'

'Like… skin.'

'Oh, come on, Delgado! At least try—'

'Okay, okay,' she says, laughing. 'Smooth. Soft. Warm. Better?'

'Yes. _Thank you_. Are you done goofing off now?'

She nods, her lips twitching.

'Okay. I want you to run your hands back up your thighs, but use your fingertips this time. And go slow. And for God's sake, Delgado, _stop laughing_.'

She releases a final giggle, draws a deep breath and shakes out her hands. She replaces them on her knees and starts a very mechanical, unsensual journey up her legs. She may as well be brushing crumbs off a table.

Where is that horny woman from the Bayberry Inn?

'Goddammit!' he shouts.

This is going nowhere and he's well past feeling like an idiot. He's about to end it when he hears himself say, 'Start over, and pretend you're touching _me_.'

It hits them both like a slap. Embarrassed, Todd clamps his mouth shut. He has no idea where that came from—too intimate, too revealing. But Téa is watching him, her face suddenly flushed. She looks startled and lovely and very attentive, and he feels himself harden.

'You remember, right…' he says, swallowing hard. 'How you touched me?'

She tilts her chin down and looks up at him through her lashes. 'You mean like this,' she says, gliding her fingers over her calf with a delicate, whisper stroke.

He can feel it acutely on his body.

At his slow nod, she settles back and closes her eyes. 'Okay,' she says, as if to herself. 'Okay.' She moves her hands to her thighs and begins touching herself with barely there, feathery fingertips and Todd's eyes follow along, recording every detail. She goes slowly, as he'd said, her touch growing tender and sensuous, her head dropping back. He imagines that she really is thinking of him and he's once again lying on the bed at the Bayberry Inn, feeling her on his hungry skin, seducing him, exciting him, filling him with bitter resistance.

He's drawn back to the present as Téa stretches her long, bare legs out toward him. Her stroking fingertips reach her hips and the silk barrier of her panties and she stops, shivering, the blush of arousal evident on her skin. He feels a tug of possibility; there may come a day when he'll use what he's learning and allow himself to touch her in this same way. She'll lay back and sigh, open herself to him... and as he imagines this day, the dark impulse, the predatory urge, moves close again, heating his blood.

It can't be today. Watching will have to be enough.

She draws her fingers along the edge of her panties and shivers again.

'Cold?' Todd asks, knowing the answer.

She opens her eyes like a sleepy cat. 'Not cold,' she says, her voice low, soft.

'Now,' he says, matching her tone. 'Spread your legs, nice and wide.'

Her eyes are hooded as she shifts her hips to give him a better view, then she slowly, deliberately opens her legs. Her compliance is intoxicating and he can't help but wonder how far he could take this, what he could make her do.

'Move your hand between your legs and stroke yourself, just one light stroke. And Téa,' he says, purring the words. 'Don't rush; we have all night.'

She gasps, her chest rises, falls with quickening breaths, the curve of her breasts shimmers with perspiration. Her hand begins to move, but then she stops and can't meet his eyes. She seems suddenly shy, fragile and unsure; wholly unfamiliar to him, utterly un-Delgado-like.

'Do it,' he says. Then adds, quietly, 'for me.'

Her entire body relaxes at that, as though a great weight has suddenly been lifted, and she dips her head in an obedient nod that stirs him deeply. She slides her hand from her hip down to the lace and silk between her legs, and her eyes slip closed as she tilts her pelvis. A small movement of her fingers and she shudders, gasps.

'That's enough,' he says, yearning toward her, his heart pounding.

No, it's _not_ enough. Not nearly.

She whimpers but withdraws her hand. She's trembling.

He is suddenly supremely confident in his role. This is what they both want, he's sure of it now, and he feels that he's found his calling: to make Téa Delgado tremble.

This is going to be one hell of a night.

_Yeah, she'll never recover… _the predatory thing whispers_. _He stuffs it down.

'In the mood yet?' he says.

She nods slowly, and looks directly into his eyes. He sees reflected there everything he's feeling: amazement, anticipation, savage hunger, and one thing he's not… not at all: submissiveness. She gives him a slow, tremulous smile and a wave of understanding seems to pass between them. Despite the dark thing inside—eager, watchful—he has never felt so close to her, so tender and protective. He can almost imagine letting himself—

The timer dings.


	3. Chapter 3

**CHAPTER THREE**

Téa flinches like she's been slapped and quickly closes her legs.

'Shit.' Todd grabs the thing from the floor to silence it, but it's too late; whatever he'd seen in her eyes flickers and vanishes.

'Another round,' he says a bit frantically, starting to turn the dial again.

'Todd, don't.' She seems dazed, like she's just been roused from a dream, and her hands shake as they smooth the nightgown down over her knees. 'The moment—'

'The moment's right here, Téa,' he says, struggling to sound in control, yet gentle. 'Lie back.'

Her face softens and her lips slowly part. He thinks for a moment that she'll comply, but then she stiffens, her eyes flashing, and he's bitterly disappointed to see that she's all Delgado again.

She rubs her forehead and glares at him. 'You liked that, didn't you—' she says, her voice thick. 'Ordering me around…'

He doesn't try to hide his confusion. 'What? You said that's what you wanted!'

She reddens and her jaw works as she seems to search herself for a reply. 'That wasn't five minutes.' Cold as ice.

What the hell—?

'Answer me, Todd. I said, that wasn't five minutes.'

'It might help if you asked a question.'

'It was implied. What did you really set the timer for?'

'Fuck,' he says, slumping in the chair and dropping the plastic thing on the floor with a thud. Her face is as hard as her voice; whatever was happening between them is clearly over. He should try to salvage some dignity now, pretend none of this matters and toss off a casual, _Whatever,_ on his way out the door. But he can't believe she could really shut down so quickly.

'What are you babbling about, Delgado?'

'The timer. You—'

'_You_ said you needed to get warmed up.'

'Todd…'

'Oh, _whatever_!' He pushes up from the chair and throws his hands in the air. 'It's a freakin' timer, Delgado!'

She sits bolt upright, grabs the sheet and pulls it defiantly to her neck. 'I can't believe I almost...if I can't even trust you to set that so-called _freakin' timer_, how can I—'

'Ten, okay?' He shouts. 'I set it for ten minutes. We probably would have gone for another five after the first five anyway, so I don't see what the big deal is.'

'The big deal is that you cheated, Todd! We made a deal. I made myself vulnerable to you, I trusted you and you broke that trust!'

He rounds on her in disbelief and frustration.

'_Seriously_?'

'Seriously.' She glares, face like granite.

Something that has been nagging at him since the Inn, eating at his gut like a slow poison, flares wildly at her accusation. Okay, he cheated. And if he wants to smooth things over and get her to look at him again the way she did not two minutes ago, he should just apologize. He should tell her how disappointed he is that things have turned to shit, how gorgeous she is, how good she makes him feel—and he never feels good. But his throat closes on the words.

He's not the bad guy here.

He feels a familiar change approaching and for once he doesn't try to fight it. He allows the edges of his vision to blur, allows the predatory heat to bloom in his veins, spread to his chest, allows himself to sink.

'I know what you're really pissed about, Delgado,' his voice is quiet, even. He recalls her eyes on him, the way she touched herself, her shy smile. 'You liked it.'

Her eyes fly open wide. 'I liked being lied to?'

'You liked…,' he says, his gaze traveling slowly up her body. 'How I made you feel.'

She turns her head and rubs her palms over the satin sheet like she's trying to wipe away a memory.

'I don't know what—'

'Yeah. You do.' He comes to stand by her bed, close, deliberately looming over her. She glares up at him, draws her knees to her chest and hugs them.

'And I know why you won't admit it. It's a competition with us. Neither wants the other to get the upper hand. But just now,' he says, seating himself on the edge of the bed beside her. 'I had the upper hand, I was in control…'

He ghosts a finger along the sheet covering her thigh.

'And you _liked it_.'

She's silent, staring straight ahead, so he knows he's right. He's back in control. It's different from before, but more satisfying, because she hasn't given it up willingly this time.

'You can't stand that you… strong, independent Téa Delgado… liked submitting to _me_.'

A scent drifts from her hair… something darkly exotic, spicy. He leans subtly closer to breathe it in and can practically taste the warm tension radiating off her skin. He modulates his voice to a low purr.

'So you have to backpedal, turn the tables, make me wrong—'

'You are wrong,' she says through gritted teeth. 'Everything about you is wrong.'

'I've never tried to hide that,' he says, moving to whisper in her ear. 'And that's why you're just dying to fuck me.'

She gasps and recoils, her eyes flaming. She raises a hand to shove him away.

He grabs her wrist in one hand, laughs and pulls her close. 'So why don't we pick up where we left off before that goddamned timer rang,' he says, his mouth inches from hers. He remembers that mouth on his cock, so skillful and eager. 'I was about to tell you to take these off.' He strokes her hip, feeling the texture of her lace panties through the sheet. 'I was about to tell you to spread your legs for me. But first you have to admit that I'm right.'

She narrows her eyes at him.

'You _loved_ submitting to me.'

Her eyes go molten. 'You're deluded,' she snarls and tries to peel his fingers from her wrist with her free hand but he grabs that one too, tightens his grip on both.

'And you're wet… all over again.'

'God, you're disgusting,' she hisses.

'Funny, I thought I was cute.'

'Let me go, Todd!'

'Oh, come on, Delgado, stop playing coy. I saw the way you looked at me in the kitchen yesterday.'

She freezes in mid-outrage.

'You remember.' _He_ remembers and the blood rushes to his groin.

The heat in her cheeks deepens to red.

'You wanted to fuck me. No need to be ashamed. You weren't ashamed at the Inn, remember? When you _finally_ managed to get at my cock?'

She gapes at him and he feels triumphant, then shocked as he kicks to the surface as though from a deep dream in some cold, dark place and the words his mouth just spoke echo in his ears. His chest tightens painfully and his stomach churns with nausea, like he's hurtling toward an eighteen-wheeler and can't turn away.

He doesn't know how he got onto the bed, can't seem to keep himself from talking.

'That was really more of a betrayal, though, manipulating me to get something I wasn't ready to give you.' His voice is distant, far more controlled than he feels... a calm veneer of contempt over roiling emotions.

He watches the color drain from Téa's face and he's suddenly aware that his grip on her wrists is bruising. He releases her with a snarl and lurches up from the bed, reaches out to the nightstand when his knees start to buckle. He's awake now, _present_.

'But, that's not what happ—,' she gasps, but he cuts her off.

'And mocking me,' he says, fully invested now in continuing the thought he hadn't really started. He leans on the nightstand, swallows hard. 'That was a nice touch. Telling me to get over it, that it was just about, what was it, _healthy young bodies and pleasure_ and all that bullshit, when _you_ _knew, Delgado_—'

He grips the nightstand with both hands, finally understanding the rage, the low hum of helplessness and violation, the _familiarity_ woven inside the memories of that night. He hadn't known how to think about it, had chalked it up to his usual weirdness about sex, maybe the echo of past traumas, and chose to focus instead on the way her mouth had felt, her voice, how much she'd wanted him.

He flashes on how she'd looked earlier, reclining on the bed... how perfect. How he'd burned to ruin her. And it hits him square in the gut that his goal tonight had been to humiliate her... or worse. No matter what they were moving toward, she had hurt him, and the point was payback. The vicious predatory heat still fresh in his blood, snarling over his shoulder, would have seen to that. And she'd been making it so easy…

She trusted him. And he had trusted her.

Sex. Power. Betrayal. Revenge. Does nothing ever change in his life?

'What you did, Delgado…,' he says with profound sadness. 'How are we any different?'

Her face is a stew of disbelief, confusion, horror. 'What are you saying, Todd? That I… _abused_ you?'

OH FUCK.

_Laugh it off_, he screams at himself with a voice that sounds very much like his father's. _Don't humiliate yourself! You're a MAN, don't give her your power! Don't be weak!_

But he feels weak... hurt. And it had taken so much energy to hide the hurt from himself… the _shame_ of the hurt… that now he's debilitated. He starts to speak, but can't.

Her brow furrows and he can see that she's deep in lawyer mode, weighing the evidence and the reliability of _this_ witness's testimony. If she starts to cross-examine him, it's even money whether he'll hit her or break down sobbing.

He can't do this. _Too weak. Pussy._

'Whatever,' he mutters, pushes away from the nightstand and turns to leave. Too quickly, maybe… the room runs like watercolor and he has a visceral memory of a bedspread in his fist, the smell of balsam room spray, her mouth on his cock, _Deck the Halls_ in the distance, his arm pressed hard over his eyes… colors spark then fade to grey and he feels grit and melting snow under his cheek, a hand like a bear's paw grinds his head into the hardwood floor. The ceramic Christmas tree his mother had made sits on the table in the hall. It's far away but he can see it. He focuses on it through the shock, the terror, through a scorching pain inside, so deep he feels it in his gut. He'd found the tree in the attic and dared to put it out. His father hadn't said a word about it…

He notices that Téa is speaking.

'—agreed to the deal... why did you agree?'

He stares at nothing. His mouth tastes like grit.

'I trusted you,' he says dully.

She makes a small, mewling sound. It distantly satisfies him. It hurts him, too.

He's hunched over the nightstand again, his head bowed. His hair hangs around his face like a veil and he rocks slowly from side to side to watch it sway. So tired. No rage… no tears. Just tired.

'Look, Delgado, it's no big deal.'

'But why didn't you stop it?' She says, half gentle, half defensive. 'I felt something was wrong—'

He drags his eyes to her, looks at her through a gap in his veil. 'Then why didn't _you_ stop it?'

She draws a deep, shaky breath, and he thinks she might cry. He decides he would be okay with that. Her eyes glisten and the color is high in her cheeks, her lips are red and swollen from her biting them. She's gloriously beautiful. _Fuck_.

'Because you wanted what you wanted. I get that,' he says. 'I've… been there.'

She pauses again and he can practically hear the wheels turning.

'But… you… _enjoyed_ it…'

His knuckles turn white where they grip the wood, but he's drifted into the long-ago dark, burning with shame... mocking, triumphant laughter wet in his ear.

_Bodies can send the wrong signals to the hands that abuse them, Delgado. _

He pivots so he's facing into the room, half-sitting on the nightstand. He'd love to sink into the chair again, but he doesn't trust his legs to support his weight yet.

His mother made that ceramic Christmas tree… he hasn't thought about that in years.

Téa is watching him closely. He realizes he didn't respond out loud to her implied question about his _enjoyment_… he's glad he didn't. Hinting is almost the same as skywriting around her sometimes. Other times, she's stupid as hell.

Maybe she didn't know. Maybe of all the secrets her eyes have torn from him, this isn't one of them. Maybe she thinks his refusal to have sex with her has been about fear, heartbreak, self-loathing. Whatever. The fact is, he didn't want to do it, fought her every step of the way, aways had. She knew _that_, at least. And she didn't care.

'Well, that's what you counted on, right, Delgado,' he says softly. 'That it would feel too good to stop? Isn't that why you went straight for my zipper instead of just holding my hand?'

Her face collapses at that and his eyes prick with tears. _Holding my hand_. Too vulnerable, too revealing. _Weak ass punk!_ He rubs his nose with the back of his hand, trying to get rid of the damned stench of balsam and floor wax, isn't 100% sure where he is. Delgado's shoulders are shaking, but he feels oddly detached, like her reactions have nothing to do with him. He wonders vaguely if she's cold. It's winter. It's always winter somewhere in his head and he feels drawn down into cold, into dark. He doesn't remember his mother taking a ceramics class. He doesn't remember her doing anything outside the house. Maybe she made the Christmas tree before she married Peter Manning. Maybe she did a lot of things before she married Peter Manning… he never had a chance to ask her. He can feel the tree in his hands, the size and heft of it, about the length of his forearm. He thinks how it would feel to crash the thing over Peter Manning's head, to watch his blood pool on the hardwood floor. He can see the smooth, round ends of the branches, the brush strokes, the dabs of paint that represent the lights… she would have applied them before the piece was fired… before the heat brought out the colors. She couldn't have known ahead of time how it would turn out…

She should have known.

'Would you have liked that?'

He is drawn upward by a voice and his eyes slide to the bed. Téa swims into focus… her chin is trembling.

'If I'd just held your hand?'

_Don't answer that…!_ So tired. He drops inside again and remembers the Inn, her warm hand surrounding his, briefly, gently, before he'd pulled away from her. Imagines that simple comfort lasting for five whole minutes. Lasting for an entire night. Lasting a lifetime.

'Yeah,' he says. The word is barely a sound, but it exhausts him.

She turns her face away.

_Punk ass FAGGOT! That bitch makes you weak!_

He reels at the voice, at the sudden eruption of violence in his veins. Delgado is small in the bed, her skin shines in the soft light. _That bitch..._ so easy to mark, so easy to break. But he's still strong enough to turn it away, to say, _I will not, WILL NOT, act on this_, so it retreats back into itself like an aborted lightning bolt… unspent… impotent, leaving him trembling with the visceral memory of potential.

'Look, Delgado…,' he says, pushing unsteadily away from the nightstand. 'Just, fuck this night, you know? All of it. Never happened.'

How the hell had he gotten here?

Then his eyes land on the egg timer near the foot of the bed and the lightning strikes… blinds his mind, races down his arms and with an agonized cry he scoops the thing up and crushes, twists as though he could smash the hard plastic, obliterate it like a crippling memory, like a leering grin in the night, like a grown man's life. He is shaking with the effort when he feels her gentle hand on his. He gasps, and instantly all the furious energy vanishes. Gone. Leaving him empty.

She takes the timer away, turns his hands and lays his shaking palms against her cheeks. He feels wetness there.

When she raises her eyes, he sees a world of regret and understanding in them. Her eyes… Delgado's eyes… dark, soulful, slicing him open like a scalpel. He missed her eyes the most in the two weeks she kept herself away from him. They hold his eyes steady now as his thumbs caress her cheeks, as his fingers slide into her hair, silky soft. He bends over her and feels the breath leave his body, feels like he's floating as his lips touch hers, barely, then more deeply as she makes a small, low sound and slowly opens her mouth. Sinking sweetly now, sinking into warmth, into acceptance and forgetting, a soul shiver as her tongue strokes his, sinking so sweetly. He rocks back to see her eyes fluttering open to reveal the same heat, the same _need_ he saw in the kitchen, and he feels a growl rise in his throat, feels himself surge and as her hand moves to cup his face he sees her wrist... marked red where he'd grabbed her, bruised by his fingers.

He pulls away so violently that she cries out.

_Admit it… You loved submitting to me…_

_Sick fucking bastard._

He staggers back. Her face is stunned confusion, but _that look_ still smolders like charcoal in her dark eyes.

He can't. He moves away, feels the doorknob in his hand, stops when he hears her voice.

'Todd! Don't go.'

It's like he's hearing her from deep underwater, painful pressure all around him, inside and out, cold and dark. He knows this... this cold-dark... a memory, a dream? She's speaking to him from leagues away, fathoms above, and when he drags his eyes around to her, she's shimmering through the current and he would swear the sun is shining behind her, haloing her hair.

He realizes there are tears in his eyes, distorting his vision, but revealing truth. It takes him a moment to find his voice, and when he does it's raw, gasping, like his lungs are about to burst.

'I can't give you what you want, Delgado.'

'I know,' she says. She's kneeling on the bed, holding the white plastic egg timer in her hands. Tears are rolling freely down her cheeks and her face is the picture of compassion when she says, 'So give me what you can.'


	4. Chapter 4

**CHAPTER FOUR**

They agree that she'll set the timer. Ten minutes, she says… he owes her. The five they agreed to for her _performance_, plus the five he supposedly cheated her out of. He could have left, should have left. There was no contract, no informal agreement, no insistent mouth on his cock that forced him to stay in that room with her. Just the knowledge that _if_ he left, he'd never go back. And this has to end.

It's possible that he'll kill her tonight. He won't mean to, but he may look over at some point and realize that she's dead and that he did it. He's been floating a lot… sometimes in, sometimes out, sometimes sinking out of sight. There's no telling. The violence is so close it tastes like ozone. He tried to warn her, but she dismissed it, said she wants to kill him sometimes, too, and she laughed, a bubbly sound because he's hearing her from underneath, where things are softer and don't hurt as much in the cold-dark.

But he'd stared hard at her bruised wrists, and she'd followed his eyes, looked away. Maybe she understood.

Whatever.

_Selfish, stupid bitch_.

He doesn't know what to expect when he lays down on the bed like the voice orders. Whatever... he'll force himself to deal. He closes his eyes as he had so many times in the past.

He feels the mattress dip beside him and braces himself. 'How can I make things right?' says a soft, tender voice. He's startled, confused. He opens his eyes to find Delgado. Not Peter Manning.

He's too tired, disoriented. 'Tell me to leave.'

'Do you want to leave?'

He says nothing. He didn't fight back then, either... didn't try to leave. Did as he was told.

'Can I hold your hand?'

The breath catches in his chest. It could be a trick... she still might mean him harm.

'It's your ten minutes,' he says, his throat tight.

The mattress shifts again and he hears a grinding squeak as she sets the timer and he's gratified that he did some damage to the thing after all.

* * *

**INTERVAL 2**

Téa lays down beside him, close enough that the heat from their arms seems to merge and create a kind of force field between them. He shrugs away, then more until there's just cool air.

'I'm going to hold your hand now, okay?'

His hand is fisted at his side and he flinches as he feels her hand slip beneath and cup his gently. There are no teasing strokes down his arm, no bad intent that he can sense, no seduction. It's warm and he feels a soothing tingle where their skin touches. Just skin... her skin... her _caring_. It's there for him, he just has to trust it, let it in. And it's patient… not like the predatory thing when it flares and tries to take him over. He relaxes a bit, allows his fist to loosen, allows himself a taste of what she's offering, and when there's no pain, he gives a silent assent, and accepts. It washes through him, the tingling warmth, so gentle, cleansing. She sighs like she senses it too, and he feels her roll onto her side to face him, her other hand coming to rest atop their intertwining fingers.

This is... okay. Buoyed now, he rises from the cold-dark to float on the surface. There's no taste of ozone.

'I wanted to punish you,' he says. 'Hurt you.'

She's silent for a time, squeezes his hand. He doesn't react.

'Is that why you came here?'

'Yes.'

He waits for her words.

'Do you still want to do that?'

'I don't know. I don't think so.'

She grips his hand in the two of hers and he can feel her intensity. 'Todd, if I'd known I was hurting you that night… I didn't understand. I still don't. I want to... but I guess I don't need to.'

He squeezes her hand then, and she exhales, silently, her breath ruffling his hair.

And he drifts, carried on a gentle current. His body feels like lead, but he's not sinking. He thinks it might be possible to sleep.

Ten years old and standing outside the cabin, his mother asleep inside. Dark, no moon. So tired from fresh air and laughter, but he knows Peter Manning will come to steal him and he has to keep watch. A noise by the river... tripping, sliding down the bank now, down into wet, into deafening rush, water over rocks, down into cold-dark—like the bathtub at night where large paws hold him under—but he's free now, and it's too dark to know which way is up. Remembering her hair, lit by the sun, her hand cradling his head, arms around his small body, always, for days, not wanting to let go, her voice singing words just for him... each moment stretching on, stretching on, and he can't find the bank, can't swim anymore, sinks into the cold-dark... but it's okay to stay forever, because now he won't have to go back to _him_.

He's startled, lifts his head when the mattress shifts. 'Shh,' Téa says. 'The timer rang. Go back to sleep.'

Sleep. Yes, he was there. Peaceful in the cold-dark until he found the rocks, the bank... and his life went on.

'I missed you,' he says, his voice thick in his throat. 'That's why I came here.'

'I thought you came to punish me.'

'Can't it be both?'

'It can be whatever it is.'

'How Zen,' he says. He starts to drift again… she's solid at his side. 'You stayed away good, Delgado.'

She squeezes his hand. _'_We had a deal.'

'Deals suck.'

He rolls his head to look at her when she laughs and notices small, dark spots on her wine-red nightgown. Tear stains, from earlier. She cries so easily… her dark eyes shimmer so beautifully when he hurts her.

'But you wanted me to leave you alone,' she says, a blend of teasing and old hurt.

He reaches down, takes the hand that covers his, lifts it above his eyes.

'I don't know what I want,' he breathes.

He moves her wrist to his mouth and before he can think, he brushes his lips gently over the bruise his thumb made. He feels her pulse leap against his lips. He does the same to each bruise in turn, kissing, soothing, regretting.

From the corner of his eye he can see her watching him, mesmerized, her lips wet and full.

'If you did know what you wanted,' she murmurs. 'What would it be?'

He lowers her palm, presses it to his chest so she can feel his heartbeat.

'To be someone else.'

'I don't want you to be someone else.' There's a fierceness in her voice that draws his eyes down to hers. They're huge, wet, resolute, ravenous, and the breath rushes from his lungs. He's sinking again, sweetly sinking now, and he wants more than anything to be the man she sees. But God, he could have her anyway, and there's a hiss in his blood like water hitting a hot skillet, the faintest hint of ozone. He can control it. He can.

He releases her hands and lifts himself onto his elbow, lets his eyes roam her face, her body. Her own eyes are hungry and black as night. She is on her side, her uppermost breast slipping from the shelter of the low neckline of her gown. He is drawn there, ghosts his fingers along the naked curve, his thumb over her taut nipple barely hidden by silk. He watches her body shudder, her lips part with a shock of pleasure.

There's power here, too. But he's too raw, hurt, exhausted... no. He can't control the predatory heat that's blooming, that wants her fear, wants to shred her. He should push away, submerge again, where it's safe.

'Delgado,' he says quietly. She lifts smoky, lusty eyes to his. 'I'm sorry.'

He watches her face collapse in frustration and pain. He shares it. She rolls onto her back, covers her eyes with her palms and groans.

'You sure you don't want me to be someone else?'

She groans again.

If he were someone else, he would take her. He would love her… float and ride the current with her, intertwined like soft, warm hands that soothe and heal... then _not_ sink, but move together in the sweet rocking ache that rises and rises and crests in joy... forgetting... bliss.

But he's not someone else.

'You said, _give me what you can_… this is the best I can do.'

She lifts her palms and looks at him with confusion. 'What is?'

'Take off your panties, Téa. I want to watch you touch yourself.'

* * *

**INTERVAL 3**

There's really no need for the timer, but they set it anyway, for old times' sake. They split the difference… seven-and-a-half minutes. She says it will take longer, he begs to differ.

He resumes his place in the chair, missing her warmth, but it's safe over here and he can stay on the surface. Téa positions herself on the bed and bites her lip.

'So, this is it, huh?' She says.

'You can say no.'

She pauses, and he remembers that she gave him that same out at the Bayberry Inn. He didn't take it, either. She inhales deeply as though preparing herself, then pulls her nightgown up to her waist, lifts her hips and hooks her thumbs in the silk. She gives him a deep, searching look, and when he nods, she slides them down and off her legs. She starts to toss them to the side, but he holds out his hand.

'Good throw,' he says, as they land in his open palm. They are warm, light as air. She's watching him, so he doesn't lift them to his face.

'Go ahead,' she says.

He loves her scent. He remembers it from before, when he pressed his hand between her legs that night at the Inn. It had remained on his fingers only a moment, disappearing as he'd breathed it in after the commotion was over, ephemeral as a breeze. But he remembers. He inhales now, in full view of her.

Something that feels like life stirs in him, coaxing him out of a stupor he hadn't even known he was in. Floating… he'd been floating. But sometimes… deeper…someplace cold, dark. There's a vague, amorphous memory, maybe a dream.

He crushes the silk in his hand. 'Spread your legs,' he says.

She does, wide, looking directly into his eyes. No shyness now, no hesitation. He leans forward, rests his elbows on his knees. In the glow of the bedside lamp, she shines, pink, perfect and so ready for him that he squeezes his eyes shut and feels heat rise painfully in his chest.

'I wish I could… be with you,' he says.

'I know.'

He opens his eyes again and meets hers to find no judgement, no complaint. She's simply... waiting.

'What's your word for... down there?' He doesn't want to stare, so keeps his eyes on hers.

She smiles. 'Pussy,' she says softly. He feels a little thrill at her voicing the word, but is strangely shy and can't bring himself to repeat it.

'Okay. Your... you're beautiful, Téa. I want to… I want you to touch yourself.'

Watching him with a tenderness that pierces his heart, she shifts her body so she's fully illuminated for him and slowly slips a dark-tipped finger into the wetness between her legs.

He can see by how gentle she is that she's very aroused; so swollen and sensitive that a whisper touch makes her quiver.

'You'll need more time, huh?' He teases.

'I didn't realize what your eyes would do to me,' she breathes, fragile as spun sugar, but her eyes are hot with an animal desire that licks at his cock like flames.

A low growl rises in his throat as he watches her back begin to arch.

'Don't come,' he says.

She sucks in air and pauses, moves her hand to her thigh. Her middle finger glistens in the light.

He's not sure when his erection went from being uncomfortable to being painful. It doesn't matter.

_'_Go on.'

She takes a few steadying breaths and moves her hand back to her vulva. Trembling, feathery circles now, each one eliciting a small gasp and a gentle rocking of her hips.

'Don't come.'

She pauses again, her breathing tight, tortured; so close. He watches the deep pink tremors, the tiny wet shivers, makes her wait.

'Tell me what you're thinking about.'

'You.'

'Tell me what I'm doing.'

'Just this… just watching me. Your eyes—,'

She convulses then, not touching, tightly gasping… 'Oh shit, Todd—,'

'No, not yet.'

'Oh, shit…' Her body is rigid, almost in the grip, breath caught high in her chest… and he's right there with her, tension scalding his body, hands poised to seize his cock… but then she relaxes, releases her breath and goes limp.

She lets out a low laugh. 'That was close.'

He's… disappointed, his body vibrating with unspent energy. But she had fought to stop her own pleasure... to please _him_.

'Téa,' he says quietly, moved. 'My good, beautiful Téa.'

She slowly lifts her eyes to his and there's _that look_ again, the one from the kitchen… naked, ravenous… reaching down, down past his armor, past the wreckage of rage, pain, self-loathing to this primal thing, fathoms deep, that makes getting himself inside her, joining with her, seem absolutely crucial to his survival.

And here she is, _so fucking needing him_…

He feels himself surge, wreathed in flame, then that goddamn sensation of floating that separates him from her. He doesn't make the decision consciously, so he's alarmed when he feels his body rise. Her eyes lock into his and watch him fiercely as he moves to the bed. He stares down at her, poised, ready, but forces his hands away from his belt, and instead drops to his knees and clasps her hips. He pulls her body smoothly across the satin sheet to his open mouth. She bucks and wails as he tastes her for the first time. There with her, present… _oh fuck, yeah, God yeah_… yet not, floating, he licks the soft, slick folds of her pussy as her back arches and she cries out wildly, curling her fingers into his hair. She grinds against his tongue, shuddering, and he feels himself moving further away, sinking away… _no, not now!_… and as his mouth moves on her, he becomes a distant echo of himself, a numb guardian in the cold-dark, keeping the monsters far, far away.

She's coming hard, so quickly, practically weeping, and it's just too painful to stay away. He comes back, rushing to the surface, his lungs burning, but things are clinging to him, and when he slides his hands under her round, perfect ass to feel her writhe, his blood is ferocious fire and he tastes ozone instead of her. He has to sink again, but as it's ending and she's whispering those words, _God yes, Todd, God yes_, he has to… _has to_… and he feels himself float up between her legs and free his cock. She's ready, her eyes molten, but he forces himself to use his hand instead and as he comes, silently, through gritted teeth, he's distantly struck by the contrast of his white semen spilling across the wine-red silk covering her breasts.


	5. Chapter 5

**CHAPTER FIVE**

Todd is on the floor, leaning back against the bed, his pants open. He is wide awake now, more awake than he's been all night, almost wired. He feels the mattress dip behind him and Téa settles herself among the sheets again, one leg draped down beside him.

'Where did you go,' he asks.

'The timer went off. Didn't you hear it?'

'No.' He doesn't remember it ringing, doesn't remember her getting up. He must have dozed off.

His mouth and mustache are full of her. He wishes he had _really_ been there at the time instead of floating or sunken in the cold-dark, but at least he has this. He inhales deeply, allows her scent to move around inside him, slip into a few empty places.

'Where did _you_ go,' she asks.

'When?

'Before.'

'Uh... to the movies. What the hell?'

He can practically hear her wheels turning.

'So, that's what happens when—,'

'When what? What the hell are you talking about Delgado? Shut up.' He wraps his arms around her calf, presses his cheek to her knee. There is no immediate danger. There isn't. He lets himself feel her, warm and comforting as a long-lost blanket.

'Your leg is shaking,' he says.

She huffs a laugh. 'I almost keeled over when I got off the bed.' Then her hand is stroking his hair.

'I loved what you did,' she says. It's just a statement of fact and she's smart not to wait for a reply. 'And you owe me a nightgown.'

He opens his eyes, has a visceral memory, makes a small sound of disgust.

'It's okay, Todd, I loved that, too. You couldn't help yourself.'

He feels disoriented, can't quite recall the sequence of events. 'You should hate that I couldn't help myself,' he grumbles.

'But that's part of sex. Good sex, anyway. Passion, letting yourself go, getting carried away...'

'You'll get carried away—in a body bag, if I ever really let myself go.' He doesn't mean it as a joke, and she doesn't seem to take it as one.

'But you won't let that happen, will you,' she says, her voice softening with something like regret. 'I saw it, the way you... stopped yourself.'

Did he sink, or did the cold-dark rise up to cover him? Either way…

'Better a ruined nightgown, than—'

'What? What do you think would happen?'

He sighs deeply. 'Whatever.'

She jostles him with her leg and he hugs it tighter. He feels her lift his hair and let it flow through her fingers like water, making his scalp tingle. He closes his eyes, doesn't try to muffle a sigh.

They're quiet for a time. It's companionable, nice. It's been a long while since he hasn't felt the need to protect anyone from anything, including himself, and he's grateful to her post-orgasm hormones that she's letting him be. She'd hardly be Delgado if she didn't dig a little bit, but at least she's not cross-examining him. She's not asking, for instance, why he's holding onto her leg for dear life.

He feels the mattress shift behind him again as she stretches her body. She makes a low, purring sound that reminds him he really should zip up his pants.

'You're very good at that,' she says languidly.

'What?'

'Do you want the Latin?'

'Oh… that. How do you even know, Delgado? The state you were in, I could have launched a paper airplane at you from across the room and you'd have been a screaming mess.'

'Jesus, Todd!' She laughs and his skin ripples happily in response.

He inhales again, absorbing her into his cells, grateful to his own hormones for creating this calm place inside where he can just accept what she offers and not look too closely at his confusion. He's exhausted, that's all, and the monsters will be back soon enough. But for now… he made her come—loud, long and deep. He feels his cock stir again, wonders how long he can go without washing his face before it gets gross.

She's flexing her foot and the movement catches his attention.

He's always had a little thing for feet, but since it's one of his lesser afflictions, he hasn't bothered to feel weird about it. She twitches when he strokes her arch, relaxes when he takes her foot in his hands. It seems ridiculously small and… with a shock, he realizes that her toenail polish doesn't match her fingernail polish. It stops him cold. She's usually perfect—everything matches everything. Case in point, he noticed her fingernails because they're the same shade as her nightgown. But this is a bubblegum pink that not only doesn't match, but is so wrong for her in every way that he can't believe it didn't register before. Delgado is sophisticated, elegant… this is cheap, strangely _weak_. His mind struggles to make sense of this anomaly: maybe it's an experiment gone awry and she forgot to take it off, maybe she lost a bet... but the simple fact that it's there at all is so uncharacteristic that he feels unutterably touched, and presses his cheek to the top of her foot so forcefully that she lays a hand on his back.

'Todd?'

He can deal with rage, betrayal, games, even humiliation, but not this. Why can't he float now, why can't he sink when he _wants_ to?

He shoves her foot away and launches himself from the floor, zipping up his pants as he goes. 'That's it, Delgado,' he says, trying to steady his voice. 'Playtime's over.'

She looks stunned. She pulls her foot up onto the bed and starts examining it.

'No, it's not—stop that!' He shouts. He runs his hand over his face, reactivating her scent, and nearly collapses.

'Todd, what the HELL is going on?'

He's got his hand on the doorknob now, pulls, can't understand why it won't open.

'Todd, stop!'

He stops, panting, braces himself against the doorframe with both hands. He hates being this awake, this… raw. And it was only a little while ago he'd stood on this exact spot, trying just as desperately to leave, and both times her voice, her _power,_ have stopped him.

'I'm never getting out of this room alive, am I?' He says weakly. 'This is some kind of horror movie. I'm trapped in here forever, like a rat in a lab, and you're the vivio—... what's the word...'

'I'm the vivisectionist?'

'Yeah, that.'

'You think I'm _experimenting_ on you?'

He turns and slumps against the door, drags his eyes to the bed. She's kneeling in her come-stained nightgown, her hands on her hips, looking magnificent, ruined and pissed as hell. _Ruined_... that's what he'd wanted not so long ago, but he feels no satisfaction now, none whatsoever.

'Fine, Todd, nothing is keeping you here. If you want to leave, then get out.'

'I can't open the door.'

'It's locked, you moron.'

He makes a half turn toward the door, stops and slides down to the floor instead. Every cell is buzzing and he's starting to feel dizzy.

'I give up,' he says, dropping his head into his hands.

'No one's fighting you but _you_.'

'Whatever.'

He can practically hear her teeth grinding. 'If you say that again, I'm going to murder your parrot.'

'Hey,' he says, reaching for normalcy. 'Moose is an innocent bystander.'

'Well so am I, yet here I am, on the frontline of whatever war you have raging inside yourself, and I'm sick of getting hit by shrapnel. Now, do you want to tell me what just happened?'

'Um... not really.'

'Then get out.'

'Okay.' But he doesn't move. He's facing away from her, his shoulder pressed to the door. His wired energy has sputtered, leaving him feeling battered, hollowed out. He thinks this might be a good place to sleep. He hears her fold her arms; it's improbable that he does, but it would be the next logical thing for her to do. He hazards a glance around. Yep. And she's glaring at him.

'It was your nail polish,' he says.

She flexes her fingers and glances down at her hands.

'No, your _toe_nail polish.'

Her brow furrows in confusion.

'It's pink.'

'So?'

'_Bubblegum_ pink.'

She sits back on the bed and props up her foot so she can see. 'I think it's cute,' she says. 'But if it offends you so much that you have to run screaming from the room, I'll put socks on.'

'So that's deliberate?'

She looks more confused than ever. 'Todd—'

He pushes to his feet. 'It's completely wrong for you, don't you see that?' He's much more agitated than the topic warrants, and he understands why she's looking at him like he's crazy. He feels crazy, remembering how his heart had swelled with something intolerable.

'How could you make a mistake like that, Delgado?'

'Todd,' she says in a soothing, psych-ward voice. 'It's just nail polish…'

She searches his face and a tentative understanding seems to dawn. 'Oh, I see. It was a bad choice... a mistake.'

'A huge mistake,' he says.

'Well, I'll take it off right now, if you want. There's remover over there on the dresser.'

He follows her eyes to the bottle, tucked amidst her perfume, moisturizer and all the other things that create her special scent. He runs his hand over his face again and inhales, preferring this scent, the intimate one that now surrounds him and keeps him tethered, but barely.

He moves to the dresser. This is ridiculous. He watches her out of the corner of his eye, half expecting to see her lunge for the phone to have him hauled away.

'There are cotton balls in that white jar,' she says.

He gathers up what she needs and deposits it on the bed.

'So, you're really gonna do this now?' He says.

'Todd, this night has been so weird I wouldn't be surprised to see monkeys parachuting in through the window, so why not this?'

He smirks. 'That sounds like one of mine.'

She looks up at him in mock horror and he chews back a smile.

'Something tells me you won't mind watching this, so have a seat.'

He settles on the edge of the bed as she wets a cotton ball with sharp-smelling fluid, hunches over her bent right knee and presses the cotton to her big toe. She holds it there, wiggles it, then wipes and pulls it away leaving behind a flesh-colored toenail. She shows him the bubblegum-pink stain on the cotton ball.

'Feel a little less crazy now?'

He nods. But he doesn't. He's jittery again, buzzing with weird associations. He sees shoes, moving, dancing… men's shoes, huge, and a woman's, black, open-toed, shiny bubblegum-pink nail polish, heels like knives…

'Feel like telling me what this is all about,' she says.

'Maybe later.' But he has no idea. He needs to touch her, feel her solidity. He pulls her foot into his lap and reaches for the bottle and a fresh cotton ball.

By the second toe he feels confident, by the third he's an expert. It's soothing, centering, to have something to focus on, and he looks up to see that Téa has leaned back on her elbows and is watching him intently, a warm blush on her skin. Her nipples are hard beneath the silk that's marked with his semen.

He carefully moves her foot away from his groin.

'You're so beautiful,' she says softly.

A dark resistance pulls at him, the distant scent of ozone, but it's forgotten when he snaps his eyes to hers... they are shining, vulnerable, and it flares like a brushfire again, this energy between them. He's frankly tired of fighting it. But he should stop this. Of course, he should stop this.

He does stop, but only to set the materials aside and begin gently massaging her foot. It's small and delicate in his hands, and it's not a stretch to imagine that her body would feel the same way beneath his. As his thumbs press into her arch, she groans and drops her head back.

He wonders if she's wet again, feels sure she is. Her taste is fresh in his mouth and he can recall the brief moment he'd surfaced long enough to really _feel_ her quivering against his tongue.

_And then he reaches, his fingers brush the throbbing pulse at the base of her throat, then down over her breasts, stroking her nipples, and she moans and lowers onto her back, spreads her legs wide for him... he pushes her nightgown up and up, over her head, her arms, until it's gone completely, finally gone, and he can run his tongue up her stomach to her breasts, feel her hands knot into his hair again, her legs wrapping urgently around his waist…_

He drops her foot onto his thigh and reaches for another cotton ball.

'What just happened?'

'Gas pain.'

She laughs. 'Chicken.'

'Through and through.'

'Whenever you're ready,' she says and lays back, stretching her arms over her head and sighing the sigh of the contented.

'Do you mean that?'

'I had two orgasms. I'm good for a few more hours.'

'Two, huh?' He says, with a buzz of pride.

She stretches, purring. He likes this side of her… playful, sated, free. He never knew it existed.

'So, Delgado…,' he says, hesitates, knowing that what he's about to say is a real possibility. '...What if I'm never ready?'

She lifts her head and gives him an open, dazzling smile. 'The world is full of egg timers.'

His heart swells with that intolerable thing again, and it spreads from there to other hollow places inside. So it wasn't a fluke or a hormone-induced delusion. He wants to chase it away but instead he might let it skulk around a bit to see if he could get used to it.

He lifts her foot, kisses the arch, then sets to work on her pinky toe.

When he's done, he pulls her left foot into his lap too, and examines them both side by side—one natural, the other one evidence of the same fallibility, the obvious character flaw, the colossal error in judgement that could allow that color—and someone like him—anywhere near her.

'That works for me,' he says.

She lifts her head. 'That looks stupid, Todd.'

'Who's gonna see your feet?'

'I'll know. Come on, seriously, do the other one.'

He scans himself, feels remarkably... good, for him. All is calm, all is bright… no predatory heat, no resentment, no dark agenda. That he knows of. He lets his eyes travel up her body.

'Later,' he says.


	6. Chapter 6

**CHAPTER SIX**

* * *

_Previously:_

He scans himself, feels remarkably... good, for him. All is calm, all is bright… no predatory heat, no resentment, no dark agenda. That he knows of. He lets his eyes travel up her body.

'Later,' he says.

* * *

Too much.

Too much. A cyclone of pain, searing, shredding, and so he dives, gets sucked down, whirlpools down too quickly into the cold-dark with no time to adjust and he bursts apart, explodes out into limitless seas because it's too much and he'd forgotten that he is who he is—_not_ someone else, _not_ someone who can ride the current… and oh, he'd wanted it so much, but there's no sweet rocking ache for him, no bliss, not now that he's remembered.

Because of _her, because of THIS_.

No… not just a memory…

he was there

trapped in his bed at night under hands like bear's paws, hands that were doing things that hurt and things that didn't… then a shift and he was on the hardwood floor, his insides being shredded by… by a red hot poker… _NO!_ _By_ _HIM…HIS…HIS_…over and over until blood came from there, from _there_… until time broke and sealed him forever in that moment but made him forget, forget why he was red everywhere from then on, blood red, boiling red in his gut, flame red in his mind, flame hot like lightning in his veins… and it only goes away in the cold-dark where he can't be reached.

But _she_ had touched him at the Inn, had formed a hairline crack that allowed memory to begin seeping through. Flashes and images—of ceramic Christmas trees, paws, the taste of grit—things to focus on rather than the pain… rather than…

And he was inside her when—_Jesus Christ_ he wanted to kill—_kill HER_—when the red finally exploded and puked him out of the cocoon of forgetting and into that screamingly vivid moment, so like soul-death… and he put his hands on her throat and squeezed because she did this, she did all of this… so he had to get away, fast, too fast… and he can hear her calling to him from leagues away, fathoms above, dark hair floating on clouds of creamy satin, hands and legs clutching at his shell, at his echo…_Todd, stay with me, please_… because she doesn't know.

###

God it had been good, the tenderness, the pure, clean desire he'd felt as he swam up her body only minutes before and found her sweet mouth opening to him, her tongue so soft, felt her nipple harden in his palm, felt her hands growing more desperate as she'd pulled at his stubborn clothes, trying to shove them aside… laughing together as they'd sat up to do it properly, laughing as if to say, _Holy shit, this is really happening!_

_A_nd then her trembling fingers had trailed over his bare chest, down his stomach and he'd watched her eyes, wet and black with _that look_, pleading and hungry as her hands found his aching cock, caressed him, encircled and pumped in agonizing slow-motion. The breath left him and he'd snapped then, with_ need_, felt it like a physical thing releasing inside him and he'd roared with it, heard the rip as her nightgown gave way under his hands and again as he tore the thing away completely and he pushed her down… and there she was beneath him, shivering, spreading her legs for him, arching up, skin shining with heat…Téa, stroking him, guiding him inside her with one hand, grabbing his ass hard with the other…

_Now, Todd, now_…

###

Safe now, both of them safe. Todd gathers himself together again in the cold-dark, molecule by molecule because he shouldn't abandon her, no matter what she's done. He should stand guard. Things like to come out at these moments when his body is on fire and his mind is red, like in the past when he wasn't vigilant… like earlier tonight even, when he'd bruised her wrists because he'd allowed the predatory heat to come, thought he could control it. But maybe it's better this way, safer, to just leave his echo on the surface to do what needs to be done.

Because to stay at all means to see and to see means to _want_.

Above, there is residual fury swaddled in ozone—his echo feels it, tastes it, and is punishing her with it, but not enough that he has to surface and intervene. It's pinning her arms, fucking her hard… she's moaning, mewling, lifting her hips to meet every thrust. God, to experience that again—the silken hot-wet pressure when he entered her, the sweet violence of her welcome, the silvery tears.

'It's not really me!' he wants to cry, but it _is_ better this way, better to turn away and not be tempted, just sink deeper...and deeper still into the cold-dark, knowing she's in good hands.

###

And what's waiting on the surface anyway, but annihilating pain and… that other thing that's almost as terrifying, the intolerable thing. Fuck it, he can say it here… love.

No. Not again.

He should have stayed there in the past, in the cold-dark waters of the real world. So many deaths he could have embraced, so much pain he could have avoided if he'd done that, if he'd gone out as the abused little boy who drowned in the river by his mother's cabin... or as the fugitive convict who died of a gunshot wound in that same river years later... or as the newlywed media mogul with a baby on the way who tried to make amends and got riddled with bullets for his trouble, stuffed into a car trunk and sent to his death at the bottom of the Irish Sea.

He's been so many people... but the water hasn't wanted any of them. It's had a way of spitting him out so he could get back… back to her, always _to her_. To his mother. To Rebecca. To Blair. Get back to love.

Because that was crucial then, far more so than fading away in the peaceful numbness of the cold-dark.

Only it never worked out that way, because love turned to betrayal and anguish and rage. Every time.

But not this time.

Submerged, numb. Why not stay for a good long spell? That's what Coach used to call them, the times Todd would go away and come back with fuzzy memories of minutes or hours. _Spells_. Coach wanted to know if it was a form of epilepsy and Todd said yeah, that's what it was, and yeah, he was on medication. Sure, whatever. It was better not to think about where he went, better not to ask questions, because it was good. It _is_ good… to have no emotion, no attachment. He can watch memories here—images flickering like movies of someone else's life—and not be moved.

Like the one about the paws trapping the boy on his stomach, pulling down his jeans… the boy can't see the man's face as it happens, but somehow Todd can in the movie; the face, Peter Manning's face, slavering like an animal, teeth bared, eyes wild. Maybe that's how Todd looked, too, to the women _he_ trapped. He can allow these thoughts here in the cold-dark because he's safe and it doesn't matter. Nothing matters.

He hears crying from leagues away, fathoms above. A woman. Women cry so much. Sometimes it's good. But sometimes…

Another movie: The boy is spying. He loves to spy and he's creeping downstairs in his sailboat pajamas, into the living room after his parents come home. He's so small he can squeeze under the divan on his belly. A cloud of smell drifts down on him—roses, woody aftershave, cigar smoke, booze breath. He parts the fringe and giggles to himself.

A bottle bangs on the wooden bar, then glass clinks glass. A muffled baritone: 'Here, have another, you cunt.'

Todd can only see what the boy sees this time and what he sees is shoes—small, shiny black peep-toes, bubblegum-pink nails, heels like knives. The shoes hesitate then turn toward the door.

'I SAID have another!'

Huge black shoes appear behind the small ones, the sound of gurgling, gulping, sputtering. Liquid splashes the shag carpet, a glass falls with a muted thud, rolls within inches of the divan and the boy's insides ripple with the thrill that he might get caught.

'You have dick breath, you know? You two sneak off to the coat-check while my back was turned?'

'Peter, please stop.'

A quiet voice, musical, meek.

The small shoes spin suddenly, stumble, topple, then jerk upright. The two pairs are now toe to toe. The baritone voice starts to hum… the boy perks up as he recognizes the You Must Remember This song from that movie he and his mom watch when his bruises keep him home from school. He hums along under his breath.

The voice sings, 'You're nothing but a cunt, a… cheap… and rancid cunt...,' deep rumbling laughter. 'The biggest fucking cunt…'

The big black shoes move smoothly from side to side, forward and back and the small ones lurch in between.

'Peter, please—' The quiet voice catches. The boy's mother is crying. Todd's mother is crying.

'Please? Yeah, I love it when they beg.'

A startled cry, and the small shoes spin away again, stumble away and the big ones follow. A gasp as a soft body hits the hard edge of the bar, then the big shoes kick the small ones far apart and plant themselves in between.

A sob. 'Peter, no…stop it…'

A zipper, fabric shifting, and a cry that cuts the boy to the bone.

'What are you?'

Deep, rhythmic grunts_. _Vicious grunts.

'I said what ARE you!'

Small shoes, shiny shoes, heels rising and falling, bubblegum-pink toes curl, gripping.

'I'm a cunt.'

Her voice is dead. It echoes in the boy's ears as he crawls back to his bed. He is different, his heart has changed, hardened a bit, because he knows now how weak his mother is.

And she's taught him that you don't fight Peter Manning.

###

Todd hasn't seen that movie before. He's glad he saw it down here first because there's no way he could handle it on the surface. Another reason to stay... nothing but guaranteed emotional ruin up there. Fucking Delgado and her toenail polish… what other nasty surprises does she have in store for him?

Best just to stay away and let his echo live his life.

But there's still the crying; muted, rising. The woman crying from leagues away, fathoms above. And fear. A small body recoiling, struggling... fighting _him_.

Téa.

And fuck... fuck no! He feels himself pulled, doesn't resist as he's drawn up, ripped up and out of the cold-dark and suddenly he's slammed into a body, his body, a wail fresh on his lips.

_Todd, no, stop it!_ A scream, crystal sharp, like shattered glass in his ears. Téa, beneath him, too raw, too real. Too much.

She's crying and her breath is like a blast furnace on his face, scorching him, almost as hot as the lightning in his veins, almost as vivid as the taste of ozone in his mouth. He's heavy on her, much too heavy... her knees are hooked over his shoulders, her thighs crushed beneath his bare chest, but he can't quite put it together... it was so cold there, so dark where he was… there's a memory of pink and an anguished cry before the musical voice died… a memory… shiny black… he almost has it, but it fades like a dream.

And here is Delgado, his Téa, writhing, shoving at him—not a dream—clawing him with small hands. He's able to focus enough to see tears swimming in her eyes, sliding down her temples and into already wet hair. His body had been laughing, the reverberations only now fading from his chest.

He rolls off her like an overstuffed sand bag to lie shocked and numb by her side.

She shoves away from him, heaving deep, ragged breaths. '_Jesus_,' she whimpers and covers her face with her hands.

Cool air on his skin, colder on his wet cock and he realizes he's completely naked—hates being naked. Her torn nightgown lies in a heap at his side so he grabs it and covers himself.

She's crying again, soft, broken sounds. 'Jesus, how could you do that to me...'

A shot of panic tightens his gut and forces him awake.

_Do... what?_

_Think!_ He'd left for some reason, just as they were starting. But he'd left her with his echo, safe and happy… he remembers that. A quick inventory tells him he was close but hasn't come, that he's still hard. There's the sweet taste of her in his mouth beneath the fading ozone... and hate. So much hate.

God, what did he come back to, what... was done? But there's _nothing. _Just a yawning, terrifying void.

And something else, something black and ugly, as close as his own shadow. Every cell screams at him not to look but he can't _not,_ and when the memory slams him, his mind shatters and he begins to howl… not out loud, never out loud… and he can't stop because the cyclone of pain is back and is flaying the meat from his bones. He rolls over and curls in on himself for protection, but that doesn't work, never has.

Mocking red laughter, huge red paws, red hot poker. Nothing but red.

_Oh please let me go back let me leave let me sink_… but he stays.

He can barely hear her through the noise, but the third time she yells, and when she shoves him he jerks away because he remembers now what he did to her and her touch on his shoulder is like acid.

'Tell me! WHO ARE YOU?'

His throat feels raw, like he's been yelling, too. But he has to tell her... she deserves the truth now. They both do. So he whispers, hoping she can hear him through the howls and rumbling laughter filling the red room.

'I'm Peter Manning.'

* * *

_To be continued..._


	7. Chapter 7

**CHAPTER SEVEN**

* * *

_Previously:_

'Tell me! WHO ARE YOU?'

His throat feels raw, like he's been yelling, too. But he has to tell her... she deserves the truth now. They both do. So he whispers, hoping she can hear him through the howls and rumbling laughter filling the red room.

'I'm Peter Manning.'

* * *

And no sooner are the words out of Todd's mouth than he's pulled—_ohthankyouthankyou_—not down into cold-dark, but up, out, tumbling in a concussion of blinding white as vast as the ocean, and he's spinning, the howls and laughter and cyclone of pain fading to nothing, and then he's floating, numb, wrapped in a cocoon of peace and forgetting; white, not red. And silent.

But for the voice:

_'Oh, this is new.'_

Rolling like thunder, mocking...

_'What's the matter, your cold-dark gone, you little chicken-shit?'_

...coming from everywhere and nowhere.

_'Well, it's all gone now, everything that protected you, so get used to it. The divisions, the secret places, the blank spots—poof! Gone.'_

The voice manages to sound malicious, bored and disgusted, all at the same time. Ah, yes...

_'Because you remembered the night I got **inside** you and now you know I never left... and it's blasted your tiny brain wide open.'_

But it's just a voice. Just a voice. It means nothing here, drifting untouched in tranquil white...

_'Oh, laddie-boy, it's all there for you to see now, open and clear as a straight ribbon of highway, and you're in a black sports car that can do zero to sixty in six seconds and you can go back and visit any place, any time... all the horrors, all the things that hurt so much... and don't worry, I'll be with you. We'll all be with you when Hell opens up to swallow you._

_Like your Delgado... she'll be there. She was making you so fucking weak; you'll thank me one day..._

_Figures you won't look. Well, you just lie back in your little white womb and listen then. Here's a tale I like to call, How I Almost Sodomized Téa Delgado._

_The crap title is your fault, by the way; right on the verge of the main event, you showed up and ruined everything, you little shit. But before then I got in some big, fat fingers. Just one at first, pushed in nice and slow… it was a kick how her eyes flew open wide and she got this smoky look, like maybe it felt good, like maybe her man had some unsuspected skills, but then another finger, harder, rougher and she didn't like it anymore._

_Shock, such pretty pretty shock, and a whimper, soft and sweet. 'Todd—?'_

_But the turning point was probably my nasty little line:_

_'Just getting you ready for my dick... you're gonna love it, you cunt.'_

_—How you doin' there, laddie-boy? You still with me?—_

_Cunt. Pink toes, shiny shoes, mommy getting raped. Yeah, that'll be clear as a bell, too, when you come around._

_So maybe it was the tone; kinda vicious. She wasn't used to it. In fairness, though, how else do you say that to a girl? But she started fighting for real then, and that part was so funny because there wasn't a damn thing she could do, the way she was all bent up and open. Easy access makes it, well, easier; just ask the other girls._

_But then you didn't love them._

_Still, the little wildcat struggled and clawed so the third finger was tougher to ram in there, and that one, ouch!—that brought her first real tears. The fingers got pulled out then, and the dick had to leave that tight little snatch, because they were about to switch places._

_'Ready or not, here I come!' And laughter, a belly full of laughter, and that's when you came back and fucked it all up. You could have finished, but no; you took one look and ran away like the punk-ass chicken-shit you are._

_But it can't last; you can't stay floating in this puffy little cocoon for long. Mark my words: it'll rip wide open and there won't be any place left to hide from the things that made you what you are. You'll have to look then... and you'll have to man up and accept, or go out like that weak whore mother of yours. But you'll see, it's so easy once you stop fighting: No more fear, no more guilt. Just power and freedom. And peace, peace, glorious peace. It's so close._

_And I'll be right here to help._

_Besides, the worst has already happened—everything you were afraid of, everything you tried to protect her from. There's nothing left to lose, so what the hell?'_

Todd feels himself begin to slip then, to fall, tingling everywhere with pins and needles like a limb that's waking up, and the voice is growing fainter.

_'Oh, by the way,'_ it says, like sounds in a half-remembered dream._ 'A little food-for-thought before you go back to her: just who do you think will be left standing when this is all over, laddie-boy? Ask yourself, who's stronger?_

_You._

_Or me?'_

###

Todd is numb in blinding bright, even though the room is dim... bright like looking into the sun after an eclipse. Blank bright, but translucent... the suggestion of forms beyond, like white shadows without definition. And muted voices, wordless, rising tones like distant music, vibrations. One is louder, almost distinct... it had been speaking... all but a few of the words are lost...

_I'm Peter Manning_

It seemed true, felt real when Todd said it aloud, curled uselessly against a force so... lethal.

Satin sheets beneath his body, but he can barely feel them. He straightens himself, rolls over to face Téa and she is near, naked. He seems to be floating between worlds, but the heat radiating from her skin tethers him, her wet, swollen eyes watch him, not quite hating but so close. He wants to touch her but his fingers tingle with sensations that aren't real, can't be...

There's pressure inside, an urgency he doesn't understand. So much to be done before...? And words arrive in his mind: _It's so easy when you stop fighting..._

Téa pushes herself up slowly. She winces, pulls the sheet to her chest. A small spot of blood on the satin, a smear.

_The worst has already happened..._

Dazed, numb, he watches images float by, like descriptions of a horrific dream, a movie, that has nothing to do with him, doesn't quite know what's real...

She looks from the blood to him, eyes murderous. 'Peter. Fucking. Manning...?' she hisses.

He flinches reflexively at the name. His throat is scratchy raw, and it hurts to talk, like things are bursting inside, trying to climb up and out. And though he can't remember, he knows he has to pretend to because there's not much time... so much to be done before control slips away. He swallows hard, raises wide eyes to her.

'Delgado,' he whispers. 'I'm so—'

'DON'T EVEN—' she erupts, stops, covers her eyes with a trembling hand. She's real... she's very real. He waits while she breathes, steadies herself. It's so bright inside that he squints, wants to cover his eyes, too. Finally she lowers her hand and looks toward him, but not at him, whispers, 'That... wasn't you. That couldn't have been...'

He shakes his head.

_Not laddie-boy_.

She wraps the sheet around her body like armor. 'You _tell_ me then.'

There's somewhere he should go, where he's safe from all this—cold, dark—but it's gone now. A pang of grief springs up, drops back into the numbness.

'I...I can't really explain…'

'TRY, you bastard.' The words feel like venom spraying down on him as he lies before her, too vulnerable. He forces himself to sit up, face her, and the movement seems to unblock the flow of strength, of _potency_, of a rolling voice that comes from everywhere and nowhere, steadying him.

_There's nothing left to lose, so what the hell?_

'I go... away, sometimes,' he says. 'Since I was a kid.'

She leans forward, eyes him warily, like a gazelle deciding whether to pick its way past a sleeping lion. '_Away_?'

'You've seen it.'

Her body relaxes a bit. 'Yes, I've seen... something.'

'And sometimes when I come back...' His eyes dart to the stain on the sheet, then quickly away. 'Things... have been done.' He adjusts her torn wine-red nightgown over his pelvis, remembers _struggle_. He rubs his thumb over the first three fingers of his right hand.

'_Things_.'

He nods.

'But it's not you, doing those _things_,' she says, bordering on eager like he's confirming a suspicion. 'You feel like someone else is... _taking over_ somehow... like your father?'

He shakes his head to ease the pressure of the rumbling voice, of something gathering. Not much time left. He blinks against the bright. 'I can't, Delgado... I can't.'

Her face softens 'Okay,' she says. 'It's okay.' And then she lays a hand on his knee. Her blood is on the sheet, yet she lays a hand on his knee. So very weak. Both of them.

'We'll figure it out, Todd.'

Her eyes are warm with concern and savage _forgiveness_ and he can't go on, has to drop his head into his hands.

His fingers tingle with memory. He pulls away, looks at them; smeared red. Dry. Blood. A surge of... power.

_How I Almost Sodomized..._

No, no, he couldn't have... and God, he can't bear her kindness, not _now_, and not when forms are gathering, coalescing in the brightness, shapes of hands that seem to reach for him from inside, pressing as though through a membrane, then disintegrating, and a confusion of voices, one sweet, like music that he wants to hear, but the rumbling one is louder. The numbness is fading, like novocaine fades, and beneath it is... _madness_... beneath it is...

__And I'll be with you... when Hell opens up to swallow you...__

Oh Jesus.

A shriek deep in his mind gains momentum until his shoulders begin to shake, and then her hand is there, too, warm, comforting. No, not _kindness_! From her, he needs something else entirely... before it's too late.

__I'll be right here to help_  
_

And then a rip, his mind bursting...

The first sounds he makes could be sobs, moans of pain, and her hand tightens on his shoulder, supporting, encouraging. Then the sounds grow in intensity, crystalize... and it becomes clear that he's choking with laughter.

Téa's hands jerk away like they've been scalded. He lifts his head to find her gaping, her eyes huge and stunned as a clubbed cow's.

'Jesus _Christ_, Delgado, your face!' He rolls, collapses onto his back, hugs his knees to his chest, hooting. 'Oh, your face, your face!'

'Todd!' She reels back, clutching the sheet to her breast like a shield.

'_Oh, Todd, it's okay!_' He mimics in an ugly falsetto, 'It's okay that you rammed your fingers up my ass! It's okay!'

It takes a moment, but when she manages to shake off the shock, she's a tsunami of rage.

'You PRICK!' She shrieks, surges to her knees, flings a fist toward him which he easily bats away. '_Pinche cabrón hijo de mil putas piece of SHIT!_'

He howls with laughter. 'Well, isn't that what you wanted me to say, Delgado, that it wasn't me? That I was,'—he reaches up, wiggles red fingers in her face—'_taken over_ by a bad, bad man or some shit like that? You wanna hear the truth, that I've been dying to fuck that ass of yours for months now?'

She blanches, looks like she wants to puke.

'Yeah, didn't think so.'

She gulps air, shakes her head, disorientation replacing rage. She looks like a trapped animal and her eyes rocket around the room in search of something they aren't finding, before finally landing on him.

'You're crazy,' she gasps, more a question than an accusation.

'Nope, sorry. Not even a little bit.'

'So you... how could you...,' her voice is small, so confused. 'I can't believe...'

So at a loss, a pretty pretty loss.

But then she stiffens, shakes her head again, vehemently this time. 'No. _NO!_ I won't let you do this to me, Todd. I have tried and tried to reach you, and I thought we—,' she breaks off, pinches the bridge of her nose, steadies herself. '_NO_. No more. I have _had it_ with your _insanity!_' She throws her legs over the edge of the bed and winces in pain.

'Little tender there, are you, Delgado?' he says. 'Maybe an ice pack.'

She wheels on him, her glare like acid, voice thick with pain, 'You ASSAULT me, then you mock me?'

'Assault, nothing.' He stretches out nonchalantly, folds his arms beneath his head. 'How many times did I warn you? How many times did I try to get out of this room? No, I just gave you what you wanted. Tried to anyway, until you started bawling like a little pussy.'

Full-blown hatred—ah, there it is. 'FUCK YOU!' She spits, clenching her fists in the bloodied satin, shaking, sputtering. 'Fucking prick, fucking—'

'Kiss your dead mama with that mouth, Delgado?'

And just as quickly, hurt. Disbelief. Such pretty pretty pain.

He's laughing again, but it's taken on a high-pitched, not quite in-control sound which he bites back before squirming on the bed like a kid.

'God it was fun! I don't have much fun, not with you around anyway, but convincing you that I _go away, far far away..._. and getting you to _forgive me_?' He rolls toward her suddenly, then again, his laugh almost manic now. 'Oh man, Delgado, you are so fucking gullible!'

She stares down at him, horrified, like he's a pile of toxic sludge she's just stepped in. 'You're lying! I _have_ seen it happen. It's happening now, isn't it?' She yanks desperately at the sheet, tries to wrap it around herself and stand, but it's pinned under him and he's not moving.

He stops laughing. 'All that's happening now is that you're seeing the truth, smart lady-lawyer... exactly as I want you to see it.'

Her face has been a shifting kaleidoscope of extreme emotions, but she seems to remember herself at those words. She straightens her shoulders, juts out her chin. All Delgado. He can almost see her sharp, disciplined mind go to work—a mind that never goes away, never gets lost in red or white or cold-dark.

When she speaks, her voice is pure steel, adulterated by only the most fragile thread of hope.

'One chance, Todd, if you're in there,' she says. 'One chance to explain, so make it good: What _the hell_ is going on here?'

He draws a deep breath, presses the heels of his palms into his eyes. One chance.

'Delgado,' he whispers, swallows hard.

She watches him, doesn't move.

He pushes himself up to sit, turns his body to face her. 'Yeah, I have to try... to tell you while I still can.' He reaches out tentatively for her hand but she snatches it away.

'Please look at me, Téa.'

She clenches her jaw, lifts her eyes. Delgado's eyes. They're wet and hard, shadowed by fresh, deep pain.

'I'm here now,' he says gently. 'It's me, it's Todd, okay?'

Her eyes narrow, but they reflect a distinct look of relief.

'And what's going on here,' he continues. 'Is _payback_, you stupid, selfish bitch. You take from me, I take from _YOU!_'

Her mouth drops open, she jerks back as though struck and he grabs the sheet, yanks it away from her clutching hands, exposing her body. She cries out, instinctively crosses her arms over her breasts and tries to leap up from the bed, but he lunges, grabs a fistful of her hair.

'Come on, Delgado, it's just two healthy young bodies enjoying each other,' he hisses, mocking her words from the Inn. He shoves his face into hers and twists her hair by the roots. 'Now, get that ass down here, so we can finish what YOU started. You're not leaving me like this.' He flings the ruined nightgown away from his stiffening cock. 'Or maybe you want to suck it again.' He drags her head down toward his groin, sneering. 'Is that what you want, you wanna suck it again?'

She howls like an animal and wrenches away with strength that surprises him, rears back and he sees her fist only a split second before it connects with his mouth, knocking him back on his ass and freeing her from his hands.

'You fucking bitch!' Reeling from the punch, he gets tangled in the sheet as he tries to scramble off the bed and she's halfway down the hallway before he grabs her, drags her back into the room, slams the door and throws her against the wall. He pins her there with his body and pounds his fist above her head once, twice.

'Oh, I'm gonna _enjoy_ this,' he hisses into her face.

'Get the fuck off me you piece of shit _cabrón_,' she spits, twists, tries to plow a knee into his groin, but he counters, blocks, manages to get behind her and wrap his arms around her waist to trap her arms and immobilize her. She's rearing, panting, chest heaving, legs kicking. The struggle has fueled him, his cock is rock hard now, pressed against the curve of her ass and he thrusts. Oh, yeah, only a matter of time.

He presses his mouth to her ear.

'One chance, like you gave me, Delgado. One chance to get the fuck out of here. And don't come back or you'll only have yourself to blame for what happens next. Got it?'

She snorts through her nose like a bull, twists wildly in his grasp. 'Not without Starr!'

'Like hell.' He squeezes, jerks her off her feet. 'You're not going _anywhere_ with my kid.'

'Look at yourself, Todd!' She gasps. 'You're _crazy_! You want to rape me, sodomize me, kill me? Fine, you fucking _try it!_ I'm not leaving you alone here with that child.'

'_You're_ crazy if you think I'd ever hurt my little girl.' _  
_

'There was a time you wouldn't have hurt me… right?' She stops struggling, her voice shaking. 'And look at us now.'

He eases his grip.

'Please Todd... or _whoever_ you are...' Tears, desperation. _Perfect._

He lets her go, steps back. 'You take her to Viki's,' he rasps. 'No place else. You try to take off with her, I'll hunt you down. Got that?'

She wheels to face him, standing naked, defiant, unbroken, her face so drenched in hate that he looks away. From the corner of his eye he sees her wind up and he doesn't even try to dodge the stinging blow she lands on his already bloody lip.

'Yeah, I got it, Todd,' she growls, chest heaving. 'Now get the fuck out of here. I need to wash up and get rid of your _stench_.'

She turns and stalks to her bathroom, limping so slightly no one would notice but him.

###

Water. Yes, of course. Perfect. He hadn't been quite sure how to do it.

He closes the door to his own bathroom, doesn't turn on the light. He rolls his brow against the cold tile wall, slides down to the floor, more tile, biting cold on his bare skin. How cold it all is, this world he's made. He wipes his throbbing lip with the back of his hand, tastes blood.

Blood. Blood on the sheet. How could he have let that happen? He might cut off his fingers, leave them for Delgado as an offering...

He pounds his head against the wall until the sight of her hatred blurs. _Had to be done, had to get rid of her._ He tries to focus through the looming anguish... _don't let go__, not yet..._ and past the voices, past that one particular voice, the musical one from so long ago that broke him, finally, utterly. He has it now, that memory, clear, poised to cut like a jagged blade. But there will be time for that. So he focuses past it, focuses until he can make out the sound of water running through the penthouse pipes, imagines Téa scrubbing her beautiful body raw to get rid of any trace of him, especially _there_... and _there_.

_I have had it with your insanity..._

My love, you have no idea.

My _love_.

Cold seeps into his bones, but his erection is still hot on his thigh. Evidence of the sickness—of violence eroticized—that has been and always will be a hated part of him... until he _just stops fighting._

The rip in his mind was small at first, let in some of the memories and just enough of Peter to be useful, but not so much that he couldn't be controlled. The rip is so much larger now.

_Who do you think will be left standing when this is all over, laddie-boy..._

He was afraid Téa wouldn't mention Starr. That was the tricky part; getting her to take Shorty with her and make her think it was all her idea, but not make it so easy that she caught on. She would have stayed if she'd known what was happening, would have tried to help... and he would most likely have killed her. Killed all of them. But she was great, did everything the way he'd hoped, once he understood what had to be done.

_My good, beautiful Téa; still obeying me—still pleasing me—without even knowing it._

He hears her bedroom door open, her footfalls in the hallway—sneakers, not heels—and sounds that might be muttered Spanish curses. Shouldn't take too long for her to gather Shorty's stuff, lift her from her bed... she'll be out like a light, unwieldy as a sack of potatoes... weird given how small she is. A soul-deep wail rises to his throat, but he swallows it down. So close, so close now, the cyclone of pain, the madness... _don't let go... not yet... _not until he hears them on the stairs, hears the front door open and close. Soon, soon he can find the peace, glorious peace that Peter Manning promised him.

_It's so easy once you stop fighting._

Until then, he can get ready.

He pushes unsteadily to his feet, trembling, aching, finds the bottle in the back of the medicine cabinet. He clicks off the nightlight over the sink, there in case Starr wanders in during the night. She's so afraid of the dark... not like him. She's nothing like him. He crosses to the whirlpool tub in the windowless black, closes the drain, turns on the faucet, tests the flow and adjusts the dial.

He needs the water cold. Very cold.


	8. Chapter 8

**CHAPTER EIGHT**

* * *

_Previously:_

_It's so easy once you stop fighting._

Until then, he can get ready.

He pushes unsteadily to his feet, trembling, aching, finds the bottle in the back of the medicine cabinet. He clicks off the nightlight over the sink, there in case Starr wanders in during the night. She's so afraid of the dark... not like him. She's nothing like him. He crosses to the whirlpool tub in the windowless black, closes the drain, turns on the faucet, tests the flow and adjusts the dial.

He needs the water cold. Very cold.

* * *

_It's all gone now, everything that protected you… the divisions, the secret places, the blank spots—poof! Gone… Because you remembered the night I got **inside** you and now you know I never left... and it's blasted your tiny brain wide open..._

His last defense, his white cocoon of peace and forgetting, has shredded and blown away. It's all here now, they're all here, the voices and images of pain and rage, missing moments hours days, shrieks and cries, disembodied, fragmented, tumbled together and indistinct in blinding white like piles of bleached bones in a scorched landscape. A few are reconstituting themselves, assembling their elements—shape, sound, scent, color and more—rising up from within the ghastly pile, swirling together into a whole. Others are complete already, the ones from the cold-dark: pink toenails and red-hot pokers and so much more, and they've separated themselves and are coming, stalking forward to find their place inside. They want attention, are demanding attention…

_Not yet… not yet…_

Todd is kneeling by the tub, eyes wide in the darkness to stave off seeing. He's shaking now, violently, the pills rattling in the plastic bottle clutched in his hand. Diazepam. All there but four.

Water runs cold over his open palm. Not cold like the river. Not cold like the Irish Sea, but cold enough. Cold in the dark. This is good.

Viki gave him the bottle, full, pressed it into his hand. For his insomnia. He didn't ask for it, didn't want it. But he kept it. Sat in the cabinet untouched for months… the name had a bad association he couldn't place. But last year—Starr's aplastic anemia, Thornhart tormenting him like a recurring plague, Blair's accident, miscarriage—crisis after fucking crisis… Whatever. One night he was losing it so he grabbed the thing from the back of the cabinet, dry-swallowed a few, clutched the bottle and willed the drug to kick in _fucking NOW_, stared at the shapes on the label until they became letters and letters became a word that he felt like a drill in his brain when he finally made the connection.

Diazepam.

_Valium._

Valium and vodka. Mother in the bathtub on a cold winter's night.

Suicide.

He'd puked the pills up then... rammed his fingers down his throat like some goddamned bulimic chick and puked them into the john, flushed again and again as he collapsed, his brow sliding against the sweaty toilet tank, and he cried and cried until he was cried out. And then he slept, finally, mercifully… slept.

Woke up and put the bottle back in the cabinet.

His eyes are burning now with the need to blink but he won't close them. The pressure inside, G-forces trying to snap his head around, flashing bright with noise and movement, not so bad with open eyes. Is he insane yet? Did it happen?

He turns off the faucet just in time to hear the front door slam. A definite fuck-you slam from Delgado.

Then raw, blind panic.

_Delgado! Jesus don't go don't leave me alone…_

Panting, gripping the edge of the tub to push himself up, he moves, turns… _go after her; nothing's done, nothing's final. _He's still in control… lifts his body and rolls, slides into the tub with a drenching splash. He yelps at the shock of cold, shaking, shivering arms wrap around himself to contain the necessary anguish of _aloneness_, skin slides over prickled skin and what's in his hand? He feels the shape, a bottle… oh yeah, _dead mama pills,_ and he laughs because _only a sick fuck would think something like that. _He pops the cap, shakes out a handful—not enough to overdose, not enough to...

_Go out like that weak whore mother of yours_

...just enough to sleep and sink forever and not get spit back out.

_Cripes, a chicken-shit to the end, aren't you, _laddie-boy?_ You can't even die like a man. _ _At least have the balls to cut your own throat!_

Razors flashing in his brain, cutting everyplace that voice appears, trying to cut it out, screaming into blank darkness, _'You got enough of my blood, you evil FUCK!_'

Enough. He can let go now... they're gone, his _loved ones_. Safe. No more fighting... done fighting. He belonged to Peter Manning for way too long. Now, finally, he'll be his mother's son.

He dry swallows pills through chattering teeth, licks his palm to get residue, recaps the bottle, tosses it, hears it clatter and roll away.

No cutting, no hanging, no shooting… nothing fast. He needs time to see it all, the whole hideous parade, all the crimes, the lives destroyed... needs to suffer before he gets his peace glorious peace. He slowly closes his eyes.

#

Not as bright inside now, but nauseating as colors whoosh by like a video stuck on fast-forward, like being inside a kaleidoscope. Sounds are either skittery or sluggish, indecipherable...and where to look inside, where to focus because it all hurts so much he has to shove his wet fingers into his hair and squeeze his skull, but it won't calm down.

He's licking at his bloody lip, copper tang, heart pounding. Maybe it won't get worse. Is _this_ insane? How long has he been insane? For years, for seconds...

Painful pressure, like being deep underwater, like too much stuff trying to fit into the tiny space between his ears...but things are clearer now, playing at normal speed and new pieces shove into existing memories, into the string of impressions, images, episodes that form the timeline of a life... recasting, even changing the memories altogether. And sometimes they shove back, because _this can't be_...

...oh, Kathy, _oh Jesus_… she offered him gum afterwards. So pretty and delicate. Blood and semen on her thigh. U2 on the radio, crumpled panties on the dirty floor of his car where he threw them, but she puts them back on anyway. Her voice shakes as she offers him a stick of gum from her purse. He takes it. Peppermint...

Pressure, and he's slipped underwater, feels his hair floating around his face like seaweed and he breaks the surface, sputters, gasps.

No, it _wasn't_ rape! She wanted to break up and he had to change her mind... peppermint... mixing with the taste of ozone, and he's flush with fading rage and a euphoric sense of power regained.

Yes. _Rape_.

He cries out, crashes a fist into his head, and again. But this is what he'd wanted... to see it all.

It's boiling red, that slice of memory, with a feel of... _predatory heat_, and there are a lot more like it. He wants to find them—a twisted scavenger hunt—but there are others, too... images and scenes that are different in tone from the red ones... several distinct groups, in fact, scattered throughout the timeline like suits in a deck of cards that's been shuffled, hearts and clubs and... and he wants to figure it out because it seems important, but a scene is pressing forward, a memory, boiling red...

...his body is sore from the game. They lost, and he got banged up good... got benched. His father had been there. Her _Arby's_ name tag is digging into his chest as he pins her down in the back seat... _Hi! I'm Steph!_... so he tears it off. Rams into her, so resistant and tight. Words, cries, '_No Todd, please...,' _riding on puffs of air that bounce uselessly against his cheek. He does it because he can, because her struggle excites him, but he can't come until she goes limp, until the light fades from her eyes. And then… and then the sweet explosion…

He groans into the hollow dark.. is he hard? Not hard, thank God, not hard. He hears scratching, loud, from inside...

Another slice of red... and a dog is _outside_ scratching to get in. His buddy's basement, gold carpeting, _My Sharona_ on a mixtape, the acrid smell of her fresh home perm in his nose... he can't remember her name… her locker was right next to his. She started a rumor he was queer. She's fighting hard and he backhands her when she bites his lip; she never backs down so he doesn't finish...

Frustrated, so frustrated, _predatory heat_ and the smell of grass, cut grass and David's hand on the front of his jeans, cupping...

David the drama geek, best friend from grade school, the beautiful boy he fooled around with before he knew what a fag was... under the bleachers senior year. He lured David here, is getting hard as David massages through his jeans, his soft voice saying, '_Please, Todd,_ _let me_...,' his lips moist, eyes intense, traveling down... and Todd almost doesn't give the signal, wouldn't have if it hadn't been pre-arranged, but he does, he whistles, and his squad comes pouring from the dugout shouting, _'Get away from him, you faggot!'..._ swarms David, gets him down and pounds him, fists and elbows flying. Todd orchestrated it, hadn't planned to participate, but when he says '_Guys!'_... they part for him. He stands over David, waits for his terrified, anguished eyes to meet his, then he smiles and says softly, '_Still wanna suck my dick?'_ His squad falls all over themselves laughing, but Todd and David never break eye contact... because they both know he means it.

#

In the bathroom, in the cold-dark, stunned, hot tears rolling, pain so sharp he can't breathe. He forgot, forgot so much... so much yet to see, so many others...

_No, no more, not right now..._

But this is what you wanted, this is the price of peace...

Something else, please. Something different...

_Please..._

The sound of water, splashing...

A shift and this tone _is_ different... much younger, _innocent_... and it's bath time. Paws hold him under again, punishment for... who knows. For the first time his mother is there; he can see her over his father's shoulder, her face tight with terror… and he feels safe now, because he knows she'll stop it. She doesn't move, but he can wait because he invented a game that he practices in bed on the nights his father leaves him alone, and now he can hold his breath for all the way up to two minutes and sixteen seconds. The secret is to relax and not fight. He's counting to himself, looking up through the water at his father's reddening face…

_Thirty-five Mississippi, thirty-six Mississippi... _his father's eyes narrow, nostrils flare. Todd looks past him through still water to his mother; she's watching, eyes wide, but she doesn't speak or move. Why isn't she helping?... _Sixty-eight Mississippi, sixty-nine Mississippi... _and his chest is getting tight because she's just standing there.

His father's jaw clenches, the paws press harder... _one-twenty-three Mississippi, one-_twenty-four_ Mississippi..._

He hears a garbled, angry shout, '_Fucking mermaid!'_... and then a huge hand grabs his penis and twists, nearly twists it off and when Todd opens his mouth to scream, water floods in and he inhales it, thrashes, tries to get up but the paws won't let him. Gulping bath water, chest exploding, his hands scrabble at the big hairy arms and then he's hauled up and out, thrown to the floor. Laughter rumbles over him as he heaves, struggles to all fours and throws up water, bites at the air, drags it in. Then a big fluffy towel is wrapping around his small body and his mother pulls him to his knees and into an embrace, too tight because he's still fighting for air. She's shaking, weeping. '_Little Bean, little Bean,' _she's whispering. _'It's okay, Mama's here_.' He kneels there, gasping, cold as ice inside and out. She lifts his arms and wraps them around her neck. He lets them flop down again and stares at the water spreading slowly across the floor.

#

With a roar, Todd explodes the surface of the bath, pulls huge drafts of air, grinds knuckles into his eyes.

_Little Bean. Beanpole. Skinny as a beanpole._

Her musical voice floats over him, lilting like the voices in Ireland that made his heart ache. It's the voice he'd listened for, a tether in the madness... now he can't stand it.

_It's okay, Mama's here_…

I don't want this. Oh, Jesus, _oh no no no no_...

Something else_ now_, _please,_ because he can feel the bloom of acid in his gut...

Fast dizzying shift, and here's a new tone—flat, detached—and he recognizes it from times when he would sink or float, but not go too far away... his _echo_...

And Delgado is beneath him, nothing flat or detached about this... it's happening now, the shock of vivid sensations and tangled limbs, fading taste of ozone, sweat-covered skin, guttural moans so real that he feels himself getting hard in the cold water... her arms are pinned by his, her strong legs wrap around his waist and she's wild, straining, riding him from below and she's so... just so far _beyond_ magnificent... and he's plunging, plunging to the hilt again and again and it's fierce and rough and so deeply, primally _satisfying_, fucking her like this...

Another shift. It's only a moment later than before but this is a new tone, unique in the timeline... _joyful_... and he's just _FLYING_, clean, new and free as a fucking bird that just busted out of the atmosphere. His hands are twisted in Téa's hair so he can hold her head and watch her face, her eyes burning with _that look_ and she's grinding hard, clawing at him, grunting these desperate animal noises and it's like an earthquake when she comes, _screams_, crazy, bucking like a bull, and laughing, too, breathless and stunned... they're both laughing, so high on it all, rocking together...

He could come but he holds off, wants it to last… being _inside_ her, his Téa, looking down into her flushed, blissful face, smoothing hair from her brow. He lets himself… _feel_, and it's overwhelming, the... fullness, the sense of expanding outward, then he's lifted, held so gently and it's warm and perfect, and _of course_. Even though it's the simplest, most obvious confession in the world, it's still a confession, one torn from deep in his soul. He whispers it so only she can hear...

_'Oh God, I love you, I love you...'_

But even that must have been too loud, because there's a sudden implosion of raging terror and the shifting goes crazy, reeling from _predatory_ to _innocent_ to _echo_ and back again until it settles on something black and malignant that exists in very few other places along the timeline.

Delgado's face is sated beneath him, glowing with her own confession, but he doesn't get to hear it because the malignancy—the thing he called Peter Manning—is enraged. It/he masks the rage with a cold smile, withdraws his cock, shifts, lifts her legs and hooks them over his shoulders. '_I think you'll like this,'_ he says... and then it happens, _everything_, everything the voice had described. Todd watches it, horror and nausea and helplessness exploding his gut, watches himself because it _is_ him, always him, ONLY him... just hidden by convenient disguises.

No, he's not watching, he IS IT, doing it, feeling it and he IS bitterness and he IS malice, watching the glow die from her face, his fingers shoving, drawing blood. He is exultation... and hard, throbbing, so close... but she deserves it for breaking him open again and again, for never learning and making him feel that _intolerable thing_.

_You'll thank me one day... _

No, I'll thank_ myself _one day...

#

He rolls face down in the tub, roaring, water flooding his mouth, stiff cock hitting the bottom and he punches it, punches his balls, but it doesn't hurt enough in the drag of water.

The kitchen drawer... _knives_... he could cut everything off, all his weapons—balls, cock, and those fingers, and his tongue for all the evil shit he says—it's not too late to make amends. But maybe it is... he's getting so heavy, so exhausted... it'll be over soon and she'll be free... just _don't get spit back, don't get spit out_... _  
_

Dark water turns bright behind his eyelids and it's the_ innocent_ tone again… a boy...

_'Hey, Bean, catch up!'_

He's such a skinny boy, _skinny as a beanpole,_ running after his mother on the sixth day at the cabin, running down to the river sparkling in the sunlight. He scrambles into the wobbling canoe as she shoves it away from shore; she splashes alongside then climbs in front, grabs a paddle, passes another back to him, says, '_Earn your keep,'_ with a laugh so hearty and free that he laughs too, and watches the wind lift her thick, dark hair off her shoulders. She dips the paddle into the river, this side then that, tan arms strong and steady enough to pull them both cleanly through the water.

Later, indoors... she's on the phone, and he's spying when he should be sleeping, hiding behind the leather couch. His heart is pounding... she's upset... why is she talking to _him_?

But it's not Peter Manning. '_Don't do that Charles. Don't be like him,' ..._it's her new husband Charles Heath.

'_But he's my son!' _she cries._  
_

A voice crackles on the other end, deep, stern, and his mother listens, replies in halting words, interrupted phrases, and Todd's attention wanders to the moose head on the wall, the shaggy beard and glassy eyes… and then she gasps, '_CHOOSE? My God, how can you ask…,' _and Todd listens to her cry until he can't anymore. He crawls away, arm over arm across the hooked rug, glad, though, that it will be just the two of them now, just him and his mom. He would _never_ make her cry like Peter and Charles, never hurt her… he'd die first.

As he climbs into his bed he pictures her face, smiling at him in the sunlight, feels again the overwhelming comfort of her embrace. He's just drifting off when he senses her standing over him. She's sniffling, moaning softly, and he feels the bottom drop out of his world because _he knows_. When she sits beside him and lays a trembling hand on his shoulder, he throws back the covers and climbs into her lap.

'_Please choose me, Mama,' _he says_, _hugging her tight around the neck. She makes a small, broken sound.

_'Oh Bean,'_ she whispers, stroking his hair. '_We've had such a nice visit. Let's not spoil it.'_

And he goes out that night, to the river, out into the cold-dark for the first time to disappear, to let it swallow him whole. But he lets it spit him back, because of _love_, because if he just tries harder—if he's better and stronger and smarter—she'll change her mind. She has to. She would never send him back to his father, knowing what she knows.

_Never._

#

A sound like an animal howling reverberates off bathroom tile and that's how Todd knows that water has spit him out yet again. He can't stop his noises, can't stop shivering though this water isn't as cold as the river, not nearly. He's splitting open from the bottom of his soul, feels the tearing, and it's so much worse than he'd feared, so much worse… a scorch inside, like acid rising...

_Let's not spoil it..._

But he can't let it rise. _Can't._ _He'd die first_. Better to drag himself from the bath and get that perfect knife from the kitchen drawer, press it deeply, draw the long shining blade across his throat to end this now…

_That's my boy… do it like a man…_

_That's my boy… _Those words spark a chain of sudden eruptions throughout the timeline, in places where the tone is _innocent... _shameful words kept hidden away… secret...

_'That's my boy…,'_ Peter's baritone voice, breathless in the night, paws leaving sticky wetness everywhere… '_You're really learning_…'

_'That's my boy… oh, that's my boy…,' _Grandfather's voice in the garage, the same touch as Peter's, the same movements, the same terrifying need—until Peter appears and shoves the old man away, hissing, '_Get off him! Wasn't I enough, you evil FUCK?!'_

The innocent tone—the _boy_—brings more missing pieces, slots them in where they belong, fills the gaps until Todd has almost everything. He had a lot of it before, but now... he has the _extremes_. The sickest games. The most excruciating tortures. The so-called _special nights_ with his father's whispered words, '_There's something about you_… _see what you do to me? I can't help myself…'_

And new moments from another night... his fourteenth birthday, the night everything broke and went red. He thought he'd gotten the memory earlier, when it exploded into his mind and nearly killed him, shredded him like it was happening fresh. Mercifully the shock had begun to dim, eclipsed by all the rest...

But now the boy has brought him _this_...

On his belly in the kitchen, a huge paw crushes his head, grinds his cheek into the hardwood floor and the grit of road salt and melting snow seeps into his mouth. He can see the wreck of his birthday cake on the floor, smell the cloying sweetness of white icing he didn't get to taste. Michele… she had made him feel strong, had given him the courage to say no to his father… but it wasn't enough to keep her safe, to keep Peter from hurting her and making her cry. And now… this is the horrific moment that he realizes what will happen, realizes it's inevitable because he's too fucking weak after all, and it's his own fault anyway because he's twisted and _wrong_ and he must want this on some level, must be inviting it because he's been told over and over that's what he does... and Peter can't help himself anymore, can't keep from pulling down his jeans...

Then _this..._

...grunts... not clear who's grunting as his body is forced by degrees across the floor, the rhythmic, searing pain inside dwarfing the sting of the dozen fresh belt-buckle cuts on his back... faster now, pushed closer to the table in the hall with the ceramic Christmas tree his mother made, with the paint on the tips that represent lights... and then a feeling of floating in shimmering white… and she's there with him, her smile lit by the sun. Peter doesn't seem to notice as her strong, tan arms lift Todd's body effortlessly to hold him above and away from horror, her laughter and lilting voice masking the animal sounds. Todd doesn't ask her where she's been... he just burrows deep into her embrace, warm and safe...

...until the final growl when the paws suddenly let go and just as suddenly crash down again, knocking the air out of him and grabbing tender flesh, smearing fresh blood, fingernails digging deep... a single shudder and it's over, but for weight and a whisper groaned wet in his ear, _'You're a weak little cunt, Laddie-boy, just like her. Don't you forget it.'  
_

Then the weight lifts and he's free. Cold air washes over the wet places... he moves mechanically to pull up his jeans and hide himself, then he lies still, dissolving, spreading like footprints of melting snow across the floor. Sounds fall from above; shifting fabric, a zipper, the clink of metal. He's wet everywhere but his mouth is so dry and gritty... he stares vacantly at the puddle of water he's merging with and looks for his mother… and there she is, silhouetted against water sparkling in the distance and he runs toward her, runs to the river... but he's blocked by a pair of black shoes that step in and fill his vision... and she's gone.

The world shifts… sickening, dizzying… it spirals and shrinks to a tiny, single point of light that shimmers like an unshed tear... then it explodes, so blinding and violent that Todd roars with it, surges up from the floor on a bolt of lightning that scorches his veins and feeds him ozone, stains his vision and mind blood-red. He lunges, howls and his hands find Peter Manning, dig like claws into the neck, wrap to crush the windpipe, his body trembling with the euphoria of pure hate and the glorious, righteous power—_NOT WEAK NOW!_—to extinguish this _thing _that's killing him.

And he will... he can taste it like raw flesh in his mouth as Peter mewls in shock, stumbles back and tries to shake him off and break his grip… but he can't and as his red face deepens to purple, Todd laughs, fingers tightening, and he spits into that hated face. Hands grapple for his arms, pull at him, hands bigger and stronger than his that peel his fingers from Peter Manning's throat, and Coach's voice calls his name through a red fog of heat and hate… then his prey is free, lurching away and Todd is shoved back, pinned against the wall, shrieking with rage, limbs flailing, hands clawing empty air.

The red vanishes and Coach's face snaps into focus, all questions and concern. As Todd begins to collapse against him, a new voice inside warns...

_Keep your fucking mouth shut.  
_

_#_

In the black room, Todd is insubstantial as a ghost. Stripped clean, spent… no more rage, no more hate… nearly gone but for tears slipping silently into the cold, cold water. A gentle darkness pulls at his mind like an outgoing tide, lifting, urging...

_'Enough, my little Bean,' _she murmurs, stroking his hair with delicate fingers._ 'Let go... sleep. _It's finished...'_  
___

He leans into her touch, so relieved, so grateful she's here… _Yes, Mama, I'll stop now._

But the boy is here, too. He's brought one more piece, his last, and he's waiting.

_'Yes, stop now,' _his mother soothes._ 'You__ have all the answers you need__.' _She begins to sing, something ancient and familiar, leading him… he wants to follow, but the boy is profoundly sad, silently asking Todd to stay, to look...

_'Hush, love… just sleep…,' _and small hands slip into his hair. Her pressure is gentle at first, then firmer and Todd doesn't resist as she pushes him down, as the water slowly, very slowly, swallows him whole... but he can hear a voice… not hers…

The boy is speaking, addressing his ghosts...

_I only wanted you to love me. W_hat was wrong with me? _Why wouldn't you love me?_

Todd recognizes the plea, distant but piercing. He feels water in his mouth, knows he's the one speaking. He pushes to the surface… and she's gone. It's such a familiar kind of _gone_ that he wails—he needed too much, asked for too much again—and the acid flares, burns. He tries to contain it, to breathe and see the sunlight in her hair, but it burns too hot...

And then _HE_ is there_, Peter Manning, _bending over him, reaching into the water…

Todd flinches, whimpers, shrinks away from the paws grasping between his legs, but there's nowhere to go.

_Who will be left standing when this is all over, laddie-boy?_

The voice like razors in his flesh and he cringes, gasping, _'You will, o__f course it's you.'_

And then Peter is everywhere, inside and out, black, malignant. Todd tries to fight but he's too weak, can no longer move... reminding him of the inevitable outcome... as inevitable as _that night_… of the struggle he can never, ever win. Not and remain himself.

_Don't you forget it… _Peter Manning growls, his mouth curling into a cruel smile... and he fades away to nothing, leaving Todd

Todd shudders in the blank darkness... nothing there, nothing there but always there... how could he ever forget. The ghosts of hands move through him, grasping at a body he can no longer feel and making him shiver until the hands fade and disappear... and his shivering stops altogether. So numb... so heavy... his mind empties, sinks with his body, away into cold dark...

Leaving a single thought...

_I HAVE WON_.

And he huffs a silent laugh that feels like a sob as he glimpses the peace he was promised... Because no one will be left standing now. And there's not a goddamned thing Peter can do about it.

And when his mother comes for him, he'll ask nothing more of her, ever again.

But the boy is still there, waiting. He has one last thing...

#

So dim, so distant he has to strain to go there, to see himself...

...hunched over a black pay phone in a police station, his hands cupped tight around the mouthpiece so no one can hear, not Coach, shouting some legal jargon at the desk cop, not Peter Manning, watching him with fury, his shirt torn open, throat ringed with bruises.

Her musical voice is tinny through the earpiece, and much too far away.

'Hey Bean! Happy birthday! Did you get the pres—'

'I tried to kill him.'

Long pause and he grips the receiver until his knuckles turn white.

'You…'

Gulping, gasping, how to tell her…

'He put his… he…,' failing to find words. 'You have to come get me.'

'Sweetheart—'

Charles Heath's muted voice: _Who is it—is that the kid?_

Her voice, speaking away from the phone. 'It's nobody. It's fine.'

Then back into the phone, quieter, muffled, 'Bean, where are you?'

'P-police station.'

'Okay. Now, what happened.'

_God, oh God, how to say it…_

'He... he got me down on my stomach and he—did it to me.' His voice breaks and there's no going back now. Coughing, struggling to keep his voice down, choking on tears and horror.

Silence.

'Mom…'

Just the smallest whimpering sound in his ear, a syllable formed then abandoned.

He bounces his head against the concrete wall, then harder. He jumps as Peter Manning barks something into a confusion of loud voices.

'_Mom!_'

'Todd… why would you say that…' Barest whisper.

'Come get me, please, you have to come get me, I can't—please, you have to get me away from him.'

Sounds of swallowing, a voice so small and meek. 'Is he… there?'

_'Mama, please!'_

'Okay, okay. Sit tight, I'm coming.'

She's coming.

So he stands—stands because it's too painful to sit—and waits for her in a concrete room with other boys, boys with challenging, hate-filled glares, boys who used to scare him. But now he glares back with red-tinged violence, hands flexing with the memory of closing on Peter Manning's throat, and they are the ones who look away first.

Coach gets him released, but she hasn't come. Todd wants to wait, calls her again, gets a busy signal. He goes to Coach's house that night, asks him to keep trying his mom, gets put into a small room with a small bed tucked in amidst huge exercise machines that look like monsters in the dark. He doesn't take off his clothes and change into the PJ's that are probably too big anyway, doesn't sleep. He crouches on the floor in the farthest corner from the door until his knees ache, red and fire spreading from that one torn place that no one else can know about, out and through his damaged body, gathering like a storm in his mind, in his veins and he waits for his mother to come.

But she doesn't.

So in the dead of night he waits for Coach to come, to sneak in looking for a vulnerable boy to use, because that's what grown men do. But now his hands are fisted on his knees and hate that tastes like bitter coffee burns in his mouth.

Fruit Loops for breakfast, colors swirling like watercolors in the milk and Coach comes back after talking on the phone in a hushed, shocked tone that has drawn Todd up from somewhere else. He stands by Todd's chair, puts a hand on his shoulder and Todd flinches because somehow _he knows_. Coach squats so their faces are level, tears shimmering in his eyes. Todd stares into the bowl, lifts a spoonful of cereal to his mouth, but even with the milk it's too dry to swallow and the sweetness hurts his tongue.

'Boomer, oh God, I'm so sorry Boomer, your mom—'

It's so cold… colors swirling like watercolors, like painted ceramic Christmas tree lights through shocked tears, Coach squeezing his shoulder and disjointed words with no context…

_Found in the bath… sedatives and alcohol… accidental drowning..._

'No accident,' is all he says.

He stares at the swirling colors until all that remains is red. And then he's gone and doesn't come back.

Because _somebody_ has to fight.

#

A familiar voice is calling from leagues away, fathoms above Todd's numb, leaden body in the cold-dark.

_'Here you are, my little Bean!' _Her voice, her musical voice swirls around him, lilting. '_I've missed you…'_

He smiles, feels bubbles rise from his mouth, skitter over his face. He knew she'd come.

Do you want me now, Mama? Do you finally want me?

_'My beautiful boy. I've always wanted you…'_

It burns through him then, corroding him from the inside out, and he no longer tries to contain it… the acid of pure, wild hate.

Yeah...? Well_ FUCK YOU, you weak, lying cunt!_

And a concussion of power… of _freedom… _turns the cold-dark to red, to white… to nothing.

_That's my boy._

* * *

**_To be continued…_**


	9. Chapter 9

**CHAPTER NINE**

* * *

_Previously:_

Do you want me now, Mama? Do you finally want me?

_'My beautiful boy. I've always wanted you…'_

It burns through him then, corroding him from the inside out, and he no longer tries to contain it… the acid of pure, wild hate.

Yeah...? Well_ FUCK YOU, you weak, lying cunt!_

And a concussion of power… of _freedom… _turns the cold-dark to red, to white… to nothing.

_That's my boy._

* * *

_###_

* * *

Nothing. It's so sweet and vast... that he's crushed by grief when it ends. His stupid, fractured mind has followed him into the afterlife, and so have the voices, come to escort him to a hell he can already feel, the flames scorching his chest...

No peace for him. Because he fucked it up by looking at what the boy brought... he never should have looked...

Peter is taunting him, triumphant and reaching... he's won after all and has come to stake his claim. And his mother is calling, finally desperate to save him, but it's much too late for that... and the hate, _the hate_...

And here is the white light above him, blinding, banishing the darkness. He's surprised, has never been a believer… the most he'd ever hoped for was a fucking apology...

They say the light is _love. _He'd like it to be love... needs it to be love if it can wash him clean. He had so little love in his life, and most of what he had got so fucked up, so please, just a taste before hell or oblivion or _whatever _carts him away._.. _because all he feels now is grief. And the hate. A hate he would die all over again not to have to live with.

_He would die first..._

He's moving toward the light... it's pulling him up, and his mother is calling from far away. Loved ones greet you when you die... they say that too. The hate burns hotter at the thought, at her voice_._.. violent hate, and there's no fucking way he can see her _now_. Maybe he can choose his welcoming committee... who else might have loved him, what dead person could he stand to see right now...

His soul wails.

His _son_... the child Blair lost. Never born, but the purest hope and the purest loss Todd has ever experienced. Maybe he's here in some form... but will he be... _disappointed_ in his father? Of course he will, _of course_… fresh, raw grief consumes him and it takes a moment to realize that his mother is trying to gather him into her arms. It's a distinctly physical sensation, makes him aware that they have bodies in this place. He wants to fight, but aside from the fire in his chest his body is numb dead weight. He has no control over it and when it rolls away from her clutches as if repelled, he wants to cheer.

His mother is cursing him in a voice not her own, is frantically trying to drag him toward the light, but his body keeps falling, equally determined to go the other way. A gentle darkness has come and laps at him, washes over him, draws him down like an undertow into that sweet sweet nothing.

He's relieved, welcomes it if it will stop her voice. He won't get his apology from God or the universe or whatever, won't get to see if his son came for him… not that it matters now. He's so very tired... so very ready for it to end.

Nothing matters now. Nothing except _nothing_.

#

An agonized cry from above and his heart explodes with adrenaline, brings him back, back to his body, to his own silent scream because he knows that sound, knows what Peter Manning is doing to her. And no matter what she's guilty of, she doesn't deserve that. His lungs are bursting and he thrashes against the flaming paws crushing his chest, looks desperately for his mother, but all he sees is churning water.

She's shrieking, terrified...

_Todd, stop fighting!_

Hands are clutching his head, not pushing down but pulling him up and away from the flaming paws. He lets them pull... he has to save her from Peter… but he's too heavy. The hands slip and he falls away again from the bright white. For a moment though, he could make out forms... and Peter wasn't there.

He roars inside, renewed hatred flooding him... a trick, another _lie_. She has betrayed him _again_ but this is the worst... ripping him out of sweet nothing, and for what? He would kill her if they weren't both already dead.

But it's not too late to get back. His mother doesn't want him to fight, she wants him weak like her? Fuck that. He has to fight... fight her. He was so close... _so fucking close_.

He wants to twist away from the small hands lifting him but he can't move, and the only way he can fight is to _not breathe_. Refuse to breathe like so many years ago, and so fade back into sweet nothing. He hears the distant sound of a slurping drain, feels his hair pulling at his scalp and no longer floating like seaweed as water recedes. Water… the river? He's disoriented... he has other people's memories, and now it's all confused. This must be an earlier time, and though he doesn't _feel_ like that innocent boy who brought the painful memories, he's silently counting... _ninety-seven Mississippi, ninety-eight Mississippi..._

He squeezes his eyes shut as a slap stings his face. She's crying, _Just breathe, you idiot!_

And then his body betrays him and he's convulsing, heaving up water, bucketsfull it seems, oddly warm as he retches over the side of the tub where she's kneeling—all too real—soaking the slim arms that hold him. She turns her dark head away but keeps her grip on him until the water has drained from both his body and the tub, leaving him naked and raw as a newborn... a _reborn_, wailing with grief as paradise slips away.

_Oh Jesus, NO!_ _Not dead,_ spit out of the cold-dark _again_... _dragged_ out... and he thinks he's punching and kicking but his limbs aren't moving... thinks he's screaming, _Get away you lying bitch!_ but there's no sound besides his chokes and gasps. It's time for the fluffy towel now, isn't it? Time for the self-serving lies... _it's okay, Mama's here_... but instead she says, _Jesus, Todd, you're freezing, _and tries to haul him up, shouting,_ You have to help me!_

He has air now, like knives in his lungs, and cold tears on his cheeks because he'll have to start all over again and God, _why now? S_he never helped him when it mattered, when he was a boy and he needed her to survive... to take him away, to _not die_...

No towel, different bathroom... black tile, whirlpool tub... he thinks he knows this, thinks he remembers. Dark, soulful eyes swim into focus… eyes that he's ached from missing, that make his soul leap with joy... but the eyes are swollen, accusing and...

... he feels his fingers shoving inside her, sees blood... she's crying...

_Such pretty, pretty pain... Delgado's pain..._

He screams silently, horror overwhelming him as he remembers it all, everything he and the others did to her, and to Marty and Carol and Kathy and Nora and on and on and __FUCK NO... HOW COULD SHE BE HERE HOW COULD SHE DO THIS TO HIM_... _and he's crazy with needing to move, to get away but his body is lead, useless, choking on air...

But silent words come, words from before, from floating in the white cocoon...

_The worst has already happened. _

Strangely soothing, like a fist caressing his hair, and he feels himself start to relax... maybe it's okay to breathe... maybe it's okay to live, because...

_The worst has already happened... _

**_Are you sure, laddie-boy? _**

He freezes with the shock of that, of Peter Manning's voice whispering wet and hot in his ear, like so many nights before, filling him with loathing and wild hate.._. _purring now...

**_Where's that precious daughter of yours?_**

Todd shrieks, howls with terror... but it sounds like simple grunting, and this is far worse than any madness... he can't move, can't protect any of them... weak... useless... impotent...

_'You'll never touch that child, you EVIL FUCK!' _he screams, but it comes out as less than a croak and Peter laughs, that rumbling sound that hurts his ears. Oh Jesus, please, he needs to find Starr, to hide her, but all he can see is Delgado, her eyes wide and terrified, pulling frantically at his body, desperate to save him, even after everything he's done, as desperate to save him as he is to save Starr—

And suddenly he understands, bright and clear as dawn, and the terror falls away. It's so obvious he has to laugh, a liquid, choking sputter. He gulps, coughs, laughs through the coughing because it's so damn perfect...

He's in hell.

Of course.

This isn't real. None of it. The nick-of-time rescue, Peter threatening Starr... and the _sweet nothing? _That was just a cruel tease, something he'll never get to have. In this Hell, he'll be _saved_ from peace_, _snatched away from that blessed place over and over again for eternity. By _his victims_.

On balance, that seems... fair.

And the upside of being in hell? At least it means he's dead… that he really has broken the sick cycle of abuse. Shorty is safe... and he'll never have the chance to destroy her the way he was destroyed… he'll never again be his father's son.

Totally worth it.

He feels a stinging slap on his face. And another. Tears are streaming down his cheeks... but not from pain.

_'Todd, STOP IT, you have to listen to me! Your lungs are clear now, but I think you're hypothermic. We have to get you dry and warm, but I can't lift you, do you hear me? And no warm bath because it might induce a heart attack.'_

Her tone is urgent but controlled, her argument clear and sensible. Satan's minions sure got Delgado right... lecturing him in order to save him. He feels himself smile.

_'Are you getting any of this, Todd? You have to HELP ME!'_

Sure, whatever... he's dead anyway, so he grunts, gathers every ounce of strength he has and shifts his body against the wall of the tub, cold porcelain squeaking under his skin. He rolls over the edge and falls, expects to keep falling because it's much too bright here and he should be plunging into the red of hellfire. But there's something soft in his way… Delgado is breaking his fall, wrapping her arms around him... and right now this little hell of his feels so damn good that he has to laugh. And he can't seem to stop.

#

Todd doesn't know how he got into the corner, but he's facing out on all fours, naked, terrified, pulled from a different hell where other people's memories were grabbing at him, hurting... and he's snarling like a trapped animal. The lights blaze bright white from above, the hard tiles are shiny black and Téa is on her knees in front of him, soaked, disheveled, eyes wide and fearful. She's holding a black towel open for him like a doorway back to the hell he just came from. He won't go back, knows who's waiting...

Téa's voice is shaking.

_Please Todd... they'll take Starr if they see you like this. Do it for Starr..._

He knows Starr. He loves Starr. He has to protect her. Yes, go back to that place for Starr's sake.

He crawls as best he can on numb paws... a frightened beast that lets itself be wrapped in black softness, and he's surprised to find that he stays where he is, doesn't go back to hell. He waits for the hug that should be coming, always used to come, and for the lies… but nothing comes. So he drops his body, lays his head in a lap and looks up into a face, haloed by the light, until he knows who it is and who it isn't.

Then he whispers, tells her this secret…

'I bled when he did it to me, too.'

#

He's shivering violently, lying on his side in a soft, familiar place. Someone inside his mind—not him—remembers struggling under hands. It's _the boy_ who remembers the long-ago hands in the dark, hands and flame... and he was screaming. But there's a more recent memory, of stumbling on numb feet, the blast of a hair dryer, Téa's voice... and yes, it's her warm, naked skin pressed flush against his back now, her arms tucked tight under his armpits and wrapped fiercely around his torso, her thigh between his legs, snugged up into his groin. She's sharing herself with him, radiating her heat, thawing his half-frozen skin.

Pins and needles sparkle in his flesh and he knows what it means: she's dissolving and bits of her are entering him in a constant shower of molecules. She's disappearing into him, and _fast_ by the feel of it… though she's still so solid and warm at his back. She's much more solid than he is.

Is this still hell? It's not the one he was expecting, but it's the one he's got. Is this her hell, too? Is it what she expected... to be offered nothing but pain, then to be absorbed and disappear? But he likes the idea of merging with her, her into him, him into her. One of the voices inside his mind remembers it clearly... being inside her, thrusting as her body quaked with orgasms... _God, yeah_, a feeling of...

No, it all went bad then. That's when his mind exploded, when he became _the other._..

He can't let that happen again, and he can't let her disappear into his hell. He wants to get away from her, but he's shaking too convulsively to throw off the mountain of blankets on top of them, can't move his body. So he moves his arm instead, reaches behind until his hand cups the naked curve of her hip.

Her arms tighten around him.

'I said _stop_ it!' Her voice behind him is so firm that he does stop. He's obviously done this before. Maybe this has happened a thousand times already, maybe over a thousand lifetimes. Maybe they're caught in some sick, eternal loop of desire and betrayal and pain... he doesn't know how to break them out of that, but he does know what he wants.

He shifts, but instead of pushing her away, he reaches farther back and down around soft, curving flesh until his fingers find the heat between her legs.

'_Todd_,' she hisses, twists her pelvis, tries to pull away. 'That's not what this is about.'

He holds her firmly against his quaking body.

'Take it... just take it,' he says. The words are shivery and bitten, so he knows he said them out loud. Those words, so ancient and familiar, and the implication... _I'm gonna make you feel this_... _whether you want to or not._..

Power... punishment... control...

_That's not what this is about_...

Is that what this is about? He just wants to give her something to draw her back into herself, to make her not disappear into him. That's all. He moves his fingers, presses, rubs... he's wracked with cold and her molecules are bombarding him, but having a mission is... calming.

She doesn't want it. She's dry, is trying everything to pull away but her arms are trapped, her leg squeezed between his, her body pressed tight against him by his arm wound serpent-like around her back.

'Todd, I said _stop!' _

No, _she_ has to stop... and he just has to hold her until she does, hold her until she surrenders and starts to enjoy it... and there, where a fingertip grazes her opening... wetness blooms, silken to the touch and he dips in, takes it, spreads it like cream through her folds...

She shivers, makes a small defeated sound as her body first relaxes, then strains against his in breathless outrage...

'What game is this, you _piece of shit!_'

He responds to her tone, to her resistance and anger, to the feel of her and his blood rushes, hardens his cock... and he realizes then, with anguished certainty, that this is _not_ hell. That he is _not_ dead. That he was brought back to life against his will, crippled by madness and a bitter, seething hatred he can barely contain... and that none of them is safe now.

Because of _her._

Power... punishment... control...

_How could you do that to me, you BITCH! I WAS SO FUCKING CLOSE!_

And as acid seethes in his gut, Téa wrests her arm free and quick as lightning she grabs his erection and pumps savagely. He gasps, convulses, thrusts into her hand...

'_You_ take it...' she hisses, breath wet against his neck, pumping him hard and fast... '_You_ take it, _cabrón!_

_Too sudden, t__oo sudden, no, ohh__h Jesus,_ too much... too familiar... and he can't stop himself from thrusting, has to stop himself... he can't appear to_ want_ it, but he's thrusting anyway, spinning down into the other hell again, under long-ago hands in the dark... memories... his and _the boy's_... _Don't you look at me!... _so he shuts his eyes tight like he's supposed to...

But he feels the swell of breasts, hard nipples and sweat-slick skin against his back... his fingers buried in wet heat... he pushes them into that heat, hard, and hears a cry that makes his cock leap in the grip of relentless hands...

'Oh yeah, _yeah_,' he hears himself groan, too hoarse, too needy... so the pumping will stop now like it used to... until he begs for more, until he disgusts and humiliates himself...

But it doesn't stop... it's wild and angry and he grinds down onto the thigh jammed up hard against his perineum, balls tightening and he rocks, needs more, more... stoked by her grunts and curses on the back of his neck...

'Is this it, _hijo de puta_, is this _us_?'

... and she's straining, fluttering wet-hot around his fingers, flinches away when he touches her clit, but he chases her... _Take it!_... makes her take it, rubs fast and hard, faster and harder until she's crying out and shuddering, biting his shoulder and thrusting into his hand like he's thrusting into hers...

Thrusting into hands, thrusting into mouths, into pussies, into asses… his mind is a frenzied kaleidoscope of taking and coming and he needs it, needs it now… a knot of lightning in his balls and he grabs her thigh, spreads his legs wider and bears down, desperate to intensify the sensations, desperate to rocket way the fuck out of this world on that small, strong hand pumping his cock…

He chokes out, 'Oh Jesus, _fuck_ _yeah __Téa_, make me come, _make me come_...'

The sound she makes at that, the way her fist tightens... and...

'Oh _fuck._..' he cries and his body seizes, curves back against hers and he explodes, white-hot _fuck yeah_ pulsing through his cock, burning him away, burning everything away, far away and finally tearing a brutal wail of grief from deep in his soul that leaves him raw and shaking… no longer from the cold...

Sounds come from behind him, sounds that might be crying...

And then nothing. Sweet, sweet nothing.

* * *

**_To be continued..._**


	10. Chapter 10

**CHAPTER TEN**

* * *

_**Previously...**_

He chokes out, 'Oh Jesus, _fuck_ _yeah __Téa_, make me come, _make me come_...'

The sound she makes at that, the way her fist tightens... and...

'Oh _fuck._..' he cries and his body seizes, curves back against hers and he explodes, white-hot _fuck yeah_ pulsing through his cock, burning him away, burning everything away, far away and finally tearing a brutal wail of grief from deep in his soul that leaves him raw and shaking… no longer from the cold...

Sounds come from behind him, sounds that might be crying...

And then nothing. Sweet, sweet nothing.

* * *

###

* * *

Todd is sweating under blankets in bright daytime silence. He's alone in his own bed, lonely in his own bed, staring out the window at a square of blue. He's skittering like a water bug over the abyss, nimble in choosing the subject of his focus… now it's a memory of dark eyes, warm skin and warmer struggle… he can't remember which of them was struggling, what was real… but the memory is satisfying and safe.

There's nothing outside the window but blue... vivid and clear. That's real. He thinks it's real... he can't be sure. But he likes focusing on it and has been since he woke up weightless, with the abyss yawning beneath him and nothing left between him and the fall… no Valium haze, no hypothermic euphoria, no death. He should be gone… needs to be underwater, sunken, dead. Wants to be back in the predictability of his Hell, any Hell. He might be lost forever in someone else's memory… he knows he's not _the real one_, the one who's supposed to be here in this body… but he can't focus on that. He watches for a bird or a cloud or a plane to break the blue monotony… there's nothing. But it's not _sweet_ nothing... not at all.

He could slide his eyes to the right, past the open drapes and see Téa in the overstuffed armchair, dwarfed in the folds of his black bathrobe, knees drawn up to her chest. But he doesn't want to do that… if he looks right at her she'll disappear and he needs her to stay here and be _that bitch_ who ruined everything, to stay and see his fall when it comes, see what she's unleashed. So he watches her obliquely, watches her watch him, accuse him, judge him… her dark hair lit by a sun shining somewhere beyond his square of blue. His mother's hair had been lit like that once, in the canoe on the river... like fire, like a halo.

No. Not like a halo.

A bloom of acid, and… shhh, shhh, stay still… keep quiet. Focus on the memory of warm skin and his fingers buried in silken cream, punishing with pleasure… focus on blue. His mind cooperates, allows him to choose that image, but he knows it's just temporary. He's trembling. That's real, as real as the blue. He hadn't realized he was trembling. He wants so badly to be dead, to be sunken, and the bitter grief of that loss is unbearable. He slips his arms around his body… his arms are much bigger than Téa's were, though not as warm… and he hugs himself to keep from shaking apart.

There, under his knuckles… a damp spot on the sheet. He knows what it is, but is not sure which of him put it there. _Which of him_... how _nuts_ to think in those terms… how terrifying. But there it is, there they are, the voices of others, the memories of others, there with him in his head. But he can't focus on that... each recollection is like a drip of lead on his body, making him heavier...

The damp spot… yes, he thinks it was he,_ himself _who put it there because he remembers begging for release… and because _the boy_ always had to use a washcloth… but he's not sure and he doesn't want to touch it. It's evidence somehow, of this new fractured reality…

_The boy_. The poor, weak, useless boy.

Drip drip, lead dripping… when he's too heavy, he knows he'll plunge into the abyss and never crawl out. He tries to focus on blue, on the sweat bathing his skin, anything to block out _the boy's_ ugly memories, but they burst through and stoke the hatred, the wild rage banked low in his belly. That's another one… _the red rage_ is another person inside, but that's not _the real one_ either. _T__he real one _is evil, black, malignant… the one who will rise up from the abyss.

More images come now, and he's not able to choose for himself anymore. They come, unspooling before his eyes... all the colorful ways _the real one_ will eviscerate Starr… with hands, with _other things_… her innocent eyes wide, her little pink mouth twisting with screams… and he'll be trapped and helpless to stop it...

Screams… he's screaming, silently in his bed. He knew this would happen if he didn't end himself, knew he would viciously, gleefully torture and destroy everyone he loves.

That _bitch_ over there ruined everything.

And yet...

_Shhhh, mijo… hush_, he longs to hear her say from the depths of the armchair, from the folds of his black robe, and he hates himself for it. But he's amorphous… nothing but terror and shifting impressions, and he needs her arms tight around him again to give him shape. It's bad, to need this much... dangerous, and he hates the need as much as he hates her, as much as he hates the ugly voice telling him how fucking weak he is... because what he needs is _the lies_...

_Mama's here..._

So he'll destroy her first… this is her fault, after all.

Lead dripping, a heavy exoskeleton forming, pulling him down… and he trembles at fantasies of blood as the abyss yawns below...

'I've been—, ' Téa's voice is a gunshot blast in the silence, and he cringes like a dog. She clears her throat, starts again more softly. 'I've been sitting here trying to think of what to say to you, Todd... but I've got nothing.'

_Todd_... yes, he's Todd. One of many.

He closes his eyes against the grief pounding in his throat, against the rage that flares at the sound of her voice, and he responds instinctively. 'So this is all it takes to shut you up, Delgado,' he says, voice dry, accusing, thin as rice-paper. 'Wish I'd known sooner.'

Yeah, he thinks that's something he'd say. He,_ himself, Todd_... not any of the others… not _the boy_, not _the red rage, _not _the echo_, not even _the real one_. Just him.

She sighs. He stares at his bit of blue, can see her peripherally as she also turns her face to the window and the harsh light of day. She wraps her arms around her knees and seems to shrink away from him. Yeah, good… definitely something he'd say.

He darts a glance at her… and he softens, has to look away in order to keep the hate. She's so pretty, so _whole _sitting there... one person, one mind. He's shot through with envy.

He swallows, burrows deeper under the blankets to protect himself, and croaks, 'C'mon Delgado, it's funny...'

'Is it?' she says quietly, pressing her cheek to her knees. 'Isn't that what started this whole thing… our _deal_ to shut me up?'

He hears tears in her voice, profound regret.

'Five stupid minutes,' she whispers, sounding small… when did she get _so small?_

He drifts back to the Bayberry Inn, smells balsam, hears Christmas carols in the distance… her hands are on his body… she _wants_ him…

She wasn't small then.

_See what you do to me? I can't help myself… _his father's voice, thick in the past dark… in the present dark… always...

Yes, that's when his mind began to break... her _want_.

He hears her draw a deep breath, let it out. She unfolds herself and sits upright in the chair, bare feet slap flat on the floor and she's large again, larger than him, filling the room, and he huddles away under the covers.

'I need to know what's happening here, Todd,' she says. 'What did I walk in on last night?' Her voice is clear and calm and strong… it feels _real_. He can hang onto her voice... he can still hate her, but hang on and stay out of the abyss a little longer.

He gathers to himself, as best he can, everything he thinks is real. He pulls on what's left of his old familiar _Todd_ skin, so shredded and ill-fitting now, and pretends he's the one who belongs here, in this body, in this bed.

'Fell asleep in the tub,' he says, with a mighty effort at _normal_. 'No big deal. Then you haul me out like a tuna—'

'You were _drowning!_'

'Whatever.'

_'Whatever?'_ She surges forward in the chair and his eyes feel drawn to her, but he forces them to remain fixed on his square of blue.

_YOU PULLED ME OUT, _he suddenly wants to scream, sees his hands around her throat. Did that happen... is that someone's memory?

'Did you want to drown, or freeze to death… was that the plan?' She's seems to be going for accusatory, but what he hears is bewilderment, hurt. It tugs at him.

Cold-dark... even now he aches for the oblivion of it. She would never understand. He should have used the knife like his father said… people understand knives and blood.

'No plan. Fell asleep in the tub.'

'What about the pills?'

He's boiling hot but pulls the blankets tight around his neck. 'No pills.'

'I found a bottle of pills on the bathroom floor, Todd. Valium.'

'Huh. Weird.'

She's silent for a time, and he feels a storm gathering. Still, he's unprepared…

'You're a selfish _shit!' _she erupts and her voice is broken glass that slices through the blankets, through his _Todd_ skin, embeds in his heart. 'I couldn't even call for help, do you know that?' She half rises as she shouts, throwing shadows on the wall, vultures circling. 'If the EMT's had put it together as an attempted suicide you'd have risked losing Starr!'

_Téa,_ he gasps, _I'm falling_… but instead he hears himself say, 'You'd have fixed it, Delgado. That's what you do.'

She hisses and from the corner of his eye he sees her stiffen. He braces for a tirade, but she drops back heavily in the chair, deflated, begins shaking her head slowly. He senses that she's studying him, searching for a crack in his armor.

'Todd… talk to me, _please_.'

He's silent.

'I want to help you,' she says plaintively, pushing the shards of glass a little deeper into his heart.

_Oh God… remember this is her fault, don't let go of that, don't look at her..._

'Why?' He says simply.

He knows she's got nothing. After the insanity of the night, after his threats and cruelty… _the_ _assault on her body_… after everything he's done to her, she'll have to admit it. She doesn't care anymore. If she ever did.

But still…

He waits, not moving, barely breathing… because maybe… just maybe...

She's quiet for so long he imagines that she's disappeared, finally, fully dissolved into nothing because of him... and all that's left is robe. She's molecules in the air and he can breathe her in, bring her inside to quiet the chaos...

'Okay. You're right,' she says finally, her voice tight. 'I don't want to help you. Frankly… frankly, Todd, part of me wishes I'd never fished you out of that tub.'

And there… he can release hope and relax again into his hate... because he knows she's leaving.

'Part of me never wants to see you again,' she continues. 'But I can't think about that part right now. I can't think about how angry I am, and how hurt… no one has ever hurt me the way you have, in so many ways…' She falters, her voice thick and wavering.

_Such pretty, pretty pain..._

'But I can't think about that. I have to think about Starr, what's best for _Starr,_ and right now I think she needs to be far away from you, because when I came back here last night… you were crazy, Todd, even before I left. That's _why_ I came back, even after—... I've, I've never seen you like that. And I don't know what to think, I don't know if it's the pills—maybe you've been on something all along, maybe it's something else—but you need to talk to me… you need to _trust_ me so we can figure this out.'

'Don't you dare try to take my kid away,' he hisses, hearing nothing but that one intolerable threat.

'You _know_ I don't want that! Who's fought for you, _alongside_ you against Blair, every step of the way? But Todd, I know how much you love Starr… you want her to be safe, don't you? Even if—'

'She's safe. She's fine. Shut up and get the hell out, Delgado.'

'Not until I know what's going on.'

'NOTHING's going on!' He tries to bellow, but it comes out a rasp. 'I fell asleep in the tub. Maybe I… okay, maybe I was wired and needed to relax, maybe I took a pill. Big fucking deal. I fell asleep in the tub. Period. It was an _accident._'

_…found in the bath… accidental drowning…_ Coach's voice roars in his ears, colors swirl in milk. He slams his eyes shut, feels the drip of lead...

It's too much. Fighting with her is exhausting him… he tries to focus on the sound of Téa's quiet sniffles, to revel in them, but they don't last long. She draws and releases several rhythmic, deliberate breaths. He knows what's coming, pulls the covers over his head.

'Okay, Todd,' she says, her voice muffled but stern. 'Here's what I know.' She clears her throat.

'Two weeks ago at the Bayberry Inn, we had a physical encounter that upset you deeply,' she says, so detached and rational, so Delgado. 'I only found out how deeply last night when you came to my room with the egg timer, ostensibly to further explore the possibility of… intimacy between us. At first we seemed to be connecting, but I unwittingly said something that triggered an uncharacteristically aggressive response, even for you—you grabbed my wrists, if you recall, and your manner, tone and language were very threatening. Would you agree with that description?'

He says nothing, just hangs onto the sound of her voice, the cadence of the syllables. He,_ himself_, is the only one in his head now… the others seem to have disappeared. Even the memories all seem to be his… and are not so lethal somehow. He feels lighter, like the lead is melting away, letting him rise high above the abyss… and maybe he can stay here and not fall, stay in control. Maybe it's over… or maybe his whole stinking life was a dream and never happened at all...

'You suddenly backed off,' she continues. 'Your manner changed to one of… confusion, and hurt. You said I had betrayed your trust at the Inn for my own gratification… that I had, in essence, sexually abused you. This seemed to be a revelation to you, one which wounded you deeply. You became aggressive again, tried to crush the timer. When I touched you… I shouldn't have, given—… but… but I did, and you, again uncharacteristically... kissed me. Then you freaked out and ran for the door...'

'Freaked out,' he says, from under the blankets. 'Is that a legally admissible term?'

There's a pause. 'I'm glad you're listening,' she says. He hears the smile in her voice. He pulls the blankets down below his eyes and looks right at her to see if she'll disappear. She's leaning forward, elbows on her knees, palms together, her hair is tousled and soft. And she does disappear… _that bitch_ who ruined everything, the bitch he needed to hate, disappears like he was afraid she would. And there's just Delgado, looking at him with so much... _hope_. Not judging, not rejecting. Not leaving.

Not yet.

'I had to get out of that room, Delgado. But you wouldn't let me leave,' he says, and feels a stab of residual rage, a drip of lead at the memory of the _sweet nothing_ she snatched away from him… he had been _so fucking close. _He realizes he wants to forgive her, wants to be back in that room... touching her, tasting her, breathing her scent until she fills all the empty spaces inside. But there's something he wants even more...

'...you won't let me leave,' he says, quietly.

She starts to speak, stops, and watches him with a growing understanding and intensity that feels physical, like she's trying to anchor him, to make him more solid, more real than he can bear...

'Is that what you want, Todd... to leave?'

Barely above a whisper, he says, 'Yes.'

He holds her eyes long enough to watch them fill with tears. He swallows and has to look away and back to his square of blue.

'Todd... _please,_' she says, with such emotion that his heart leaps... like maybe she does care, like maybe she could forgive him, too... and give him a reason to stay... 'What's happening to you?'

… _What's happening __to you?… _

Those words are like a knife in his head, shattering the moment, fracturing him all over again, and whatever had been keeping him aloft... the illusion of wholeness, the brief tease of hope... vanishes. He plummets, covered with lead, Starr's screams surrounding him like wind as _the real one_ reaches for her, and his mind bursts with red pain and horror, the abyss opening to swallow him...

_No, No!_ Panicked, he grapples for altitude, for something to keep him here—_the sound of her voice!_—so he shouts over the wind, _'And... I freaked out, AND?' _Too fast, too loud, wild eyes fixing on her. _'Come on, talk Delgado, do your thing!_'

'Well,' she says, frowning, confused by his sudden pivot, his urgency. 'Okay… the… so, yes, I wouldn't let you leave. The rest of the night was one step forward, two leaps back. But the timer seemed to create a kind of… parenthetical space...'

'What does that mean,' he gasps, clinging to her sounds through the screams, Starr's screams...

'Well… it's like where you are now… safe and warm under the blankets, in a kind of cocoon—'

Oh yes, his cocoon… his precious white cocoon of peace, of forgetting, the last place he was safe…

He jerks back at the punch of memory... the final moments when the cocoon shredded, blew away and they all poured in... the others and their hideous memories and the voice…_ who will be left standing, _and the acid, the hate.

He's lead, he's falling...

'God, Delgado, I'm too heavy,' he cries, shoving at the blankets. '_Keep talking!_'

'Todd, _Todd,_ what's happening...'

He doesn't hear her come, but she's there, standing over the bed, reaching for him, reaching with _hands_...

He cringes away… '_Shut up!_ Just keep talking keep talking!' He writhes on the bed, digs the heels of his own hands into his eyes to see stars instead of _swirling colors..._

'Todd! Okay, OKAY!' Her voice is thin, fading... 'Um, the… the… it created… the timer gave us a kind of safe place—is this what you want?—a time out of time where we could risk being open… _I held your hand, _remember? I loved that, Todd… it was so peaceful, and you fell asleep, you were dreaming...'

Dreaming, but not a dream,_ oh please no!…. _he flinches, rolls, nowhere to turn, every fucking thing is coating him in lead... the cabin by the river, the first time he went to the cold-dark because _we've had such a nice visit, let's not spoil it_… because she didn't choose him, never chose him, left him to die...

Acid hate burns, but now there's something else, a new truth like a flash of lightning and _Oh JESUS_… the deepest, deepest pain of all… _swirling colors in milk… my fault...__MY FAULT!_... and he's spiraling, kicking off the blankets, screaming silently, but not silently because he feels the mattress dip and Téa is beside him, grabbing his face with both hands, turning it toward hers above him, her mouth is moving but the screams are drowning her out, and her words are gone, her voice is gone...

Replaced by other voices...

_'He got me down on my stomach and he—did it to me'… _Knuckles white, gripping the telephone in the concrete room...

_'Todd… why would you say that…' _his mother, the barest of whispers... not lilting anymore, not musical...

Plummeting, covered in lead, nowhere to go now but down, down into helplessness and anguish, no choice but to be entombed...

Trapped forever inside _the real one_...

A stinging slap and Téa's voice rushes at him like a freight train, desperate and shrill, '_Todd! Todd!'_

She's shaking him. 'Look at me!'

He can see her through the black… her eyes wet and wide, high above him at the mouth of the abyss...

'Okay, now you stay with me,' she's saying from so far away. She's stroking his face, passing her hand over his shocked, staring eyes... something is bunched in his fists… soft fabric...

'Are you here?' She says, lips trembling.

He manages a small nod, but he knows she can't see him so far down, even though he can still see her. There's no air here and he's drowning in black, twists his hands tighter in the lapels of the robe so he doesn't keep falling.

'I'm too heavy…' he gasps.

'No, I've got you, I've got you,' she says, and grabs his wrists, her hands sure and strong. 'I'm holding you, Todd. Todd? I need you to breathe… can you breathe with me?'

She's so far above him, receding, getting smaller, but he sees her open her mouth and pull a deep breath. She does it again until he understands and follows her lead, inhaling, filling his lungs then emptying them, over and over until the black begins to fade, fades to grey as he slowly rises, the lead melting and sliding from his skin… and then he sees blue over the shoulder of the black robe, clear and bright… so bright his eyes fill with water...

Up and out, the abyss is beneath him now, but barely… he can still feel its pull… and her face… he wants to touch her face just once more and raises his hand… but she's gone, has been gone for years.

Because of him.

He drops his hand and curls his naked body around Téa, lays his head in her lap… oh, he wanted a taste of love before the end… if only… if only so many things. The grief swallows him whole… ancient and bottomless. He sobs, wails, writhes as she strokes his hair, his skin, her soft words washing over him like a cleansing rain… '_Shhh… hush, mijo, __estoy aquí__, ___no te preocupe___… _I'm here, don't worry___... __to'ta bien, __mi cariño__… _everything's fine…'

But it's not fine. Even now, he knows the difference between a broken heart... and a broken mind. And though he's floating here, on her tenderness, on her voice… just he,_ himself… _alone in his head to face what's coming, he knows _the real one _is there… in the abyss, hungry beneath him... waiting for her inevitable silence.

**_To be continued..._**


End file.
